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100K is the point where you have the illusion of financial freedom because you can purchase a BMW, buy a nice home in a bland cul-de-sac with a bunch of nameles

100K is the point where you have the illusion of financial freedom because you can purchase a BMW, buy a nice home in a bland cul-de-sac with a bunch of nameless white dudes, and it's not until you're in your 40s and you're in danger to losing the job to a robot or a whipper-snapper that you understand that kind of "freedom" is actually enslavement. You made the wrong choice because you wasted your life buying plastic. I don't make 100K but I did recently have what you might call a religious epiphany about my job, my finances, and freedom. Luckily for me, I have little debt and actually like my job a lot so I'm not the hole some folks are, God bless them all. I just hope most of us aren't Bukowski's age when we realize we were building useless bullshit for useless people in order to buy useless plastic garbage. I know some of us are doing important work, but many of us are not. Jeez, guys, we get one chance at this. Most people are destined to live anonymous lives so at the very least try to enjoy it.

LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
the misrepresentation is your post is the word 'buy'. You don't buy when a bank owns it and expects you to pay monthly payments. You buy when you own. Is it a big deal to loose job at 45 when you own house and a car or two? It is, but not as much because you don't have the obligation to spend half your previous salary monthly on payments. Which takes us directly to this where the problem really is: debt.
- orofino 13y ago
  You're just playing with words though. People choose to use debt, I've got debt, on the car we just bought, that's it. I HAD debt, but the student loans are now paid and the house was sold. Am I lucky to make a good salary that allows me to pay these things down? Absolutely. However, I'm also responsible for the choices I make. Many people make more than I do and don't save as much, many More people make less and drive cars that are twice as expensive as mine.
  - LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
    I don't think I played with the words. No debt == freedom. And to have no debt isn't easy mostly due to social pressure - keeping up with the Jones. But it wouldn't really hurt to plan in such a way that before one hits 45 they are debt free and own house among other things.
    - drone 13y ago
      There's a lot of hyperbole about "debt," I see propagated about, especially amongst the far-left and far-right. Debt != Slavery. Conversely, No Debt != Freedom, there are plenty of people I know with no debt who are no more free to do what they please than the people I know with crushing debt. Debt is leverage. Leverage, applied correctly, is an excellent means for accelerating the furtherance of a goal. Is having debt on a house a bad thing? Certainly not in a rising market, or in a market where rents tend to exceed mortgage payments. Additionally, equity gained in that house can be leveraged when times get rough in the future, or a new opportunity arises. Most people do not have the capital power to buy a home outright, even after many years of saving -- if you're spending on rent, you likely cannot save enough for an entire home in one lump sum. Most notably, you'd have to have a very smart growth strategy on that saving to beat both inflation and the rising prices of homes in the area you want to live over the course of the 15-20 years you'd have to employ that strategy. Therefore, for those with the wherewithal to manage their leverage correctly and effectively, a loan makes a lot of sense - they don't have to pay the rents, and they've gambled, successfully or otherwise TBD, against the future price of that home. They can as well make a decision to take gains early, long before ever having had to lay out the entire capital should their local market rise. In the case of 20% down on a $100k house that increases to $200k in value over 3 years with a total of $24k spent in payments over that time = $100k in returns for $44k invested, or a profit of $56k, with no additional rent charges during that time. In addition, the same can run true for a vehicle. If a person needs a vehicle for transportation, they can apply leverage, especially if they do so wisely, to purchase a vehicle better suited to their needs than their normal cash flow allows. I, for example, could be fine with a 20-year old vehicle that needs regular maintenance. I can do that maintenance myself. Someone else may rightly say a 5-6% interest rate over three years is less costly to them than monthly visits to their mechanic. So, this "debt is bad," thing is mostly stated by people who get leveraged beyond their means, or don't understand how to successfully apply the right amount of leverage at the right time. No debt can be as bad for one's fortunes as too much debt. Very few Americans (or otherwise) could consider the idea of owning a house and a car outright at 45 without ever having taken on debt.
orofino 13y ago
Here's the problem though - you don't need to buy the BMW or the suburban McMansion. Save that money instead and when you're in your 40 you can tell the boss that he should give you job to a whipper-snapper, you're headed to Thailand. No one holds a gun to the consumer's head, they just convince themselves they need thing. Then they whine when they haven't saved more than 300k for retirement at age 50 and social security is looking rocky.
- homosaur 13y ago
  Definitely, and it's of course unfair to paint everyone with a broad brush as I know folks who are making near 100k and are donating 30% or more of their salary to charity. I just feel really angry about the US and the American culture since taking a recent trip overseas to one of those "third world" countries we roll our eyes about. Maybe not even angry, just sad and disappointed. We have so much production here, so much money, so much creativity and people seem to have nothing but fear and animosity. We've taken the richest nation ever assembled and used our resources to build a proto-police surveillance state and empire of nothing when we could have fixed the fucking world or at least fed and clothed most of it. Probably though I just need to quit Facebook again.
- lsc 13y ago
  >No one holds a gun to the consumer's head, they just convince themselves they need thing. Then they whine when they haven't saved more than 300k for retirement at age 50 and social security is looking rocky. I think that we in the tech industry are... different here. In other industries, there is a /lot/ of pressure to look the part (well, to look an /expensive/ part.) Have you ever seen a real-estate agent in a car worth less than thirty grand? Hell, I've met a few sales folks and managers who wear watches they claim are worth at least half that. Engineering is a little different in that we can dress down, and nobody is going to seriously give us shit for driving a piece of junk car. One can reasonably be a six-figure computer nerd and be a frugal person. A six figure salesman would be... well, he would be breaking a lot of expectations if he lived frugally.
  - prostoalex 13y ago
reeses 13y ago
I like this because Bukowski's first purchases when he "made it" was a BMW and a house in a nice neighborhood. I'd write more but, as you say, we only get one chance at this and we're living in the best time ever.
- acqq 13y ago
  Thanks! http://bukowski.net/timeline/ http://bukowski.net/timeline/ Martin expresses concern for Bukowski's "image" when he buys a new BMW. Volkswagon Beetle is relegated to the garage.
- homosaur 13y ago
  BMW makes a nice car and there's nothing specifically wrong with buying a nice house, I just mention it as American iconography. Not sure about the cul de sac though.
  - reeses 13y ago
    And it wasn't what we would consider a "nice house" in the present day. It's not on a cul de sac and it's no McMansion, just a house that a guy used to living in boardinghouses, bedsits, and apartments for fifty years would be proud of. Water view, but it's of the harbor, which is mainly shipping. Kind of like the difference of a bay view from Oakland, CA and the SF Peninsula, Tacoma/West Seattle and Magnolia, or Newark and Manhattan.
kokotko 13y ago
I think more and more Gen Y people in advanced European countries see owning a car as a failure - you are a fool for wasting money, when transportation can be done cheaply and also often for free. You are basically penalized for owning a car by high taxes, and for those few occassions in a year when you need a car (moving stuff) it's easy enough to rent. Spending your life in traffic jams is just a plain fail. Having to wear a nice suit is also a failure. I would never consider working anywhere where I have to wear a suit. Edit: My overarching point being that attitudes are changing. The 'American dream' doesn't really apply anymore, and especially not everywhere.
- sk5t 13y ago
  Agreed, the absolutely pervasive 1960s car culture in America seems to be vanishing, and it is on its way to becoming more of a quite-popular hobby. Traffic is worse, insurance is expensive and now may incorporate your credit score, and driving a car gives the police carte blanche to search and violate your civil rights under the flimsiest of excuses. More young people, other than those in very rural areas, are interested in re-urbanizing and riding a bicycle. As both a motorsports / driving enthusiast and bicyclist I think this is great.
- gaius 13y ago
  I think you may need to recalibrate your idea of failure. I own a car specifically so I can load it up with gear at the weekends and go diving or camping. I know a few people who are rabidly anti-car and ride fixies. They spend their weekends bar-hopping and nursing hangovers. Fair enough, but that's not the lifestyle that particularly interests me. Having to wear a nice suit is not failure either. Both cars and suits are just tools. It's what you use a tool for that matters. Also I'll note if you resent wearing a suit, you have never actually worn a nice one...
  - _delirium 13y ago
    Most of the SF people I know who use a car only on weekends just use Zipcar or a rental for that. Depends on precisely how often you use it, but if you're not driving the car daily for commute, the economics of owning vs. renting shift considerably.
danneu 13y ago
For some reason, we see long-term travel to faraway lands as a recurring dream or an exotic temptation, but not something that applies to the here and now. Instead — out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don't really need — we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. In this way, as we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called "lifestyle," travel becomes just another accessory — a smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase the same way we buy clothing and furniture. http://www.vagabonding.net/excerpt/ http://www.vagabonding.net/excerpt/

LekkoscPiwa 13y ago

the misrepresentation is your post is the word 'buy'. You don't buy when a bank owns it and expects you to pay monthly payments. You buy when you own. Is it a big deal to loose job at 45 when you own house and a car or two? It is, but not as much because you don't have the obligation to spend half your previous salary monthly on payments. Which takes us directly to this where the problem really is: debt.

orofino 13y ago
You're just playing with words though. People choose to use debt, I've got debt, on the car we just bought, that's it. I HAD debt, but the student loans are now paid and the house was sold. Am I lucky to make a good salary that allows me to pay these things down? Absolutely. However, I'm also responsible for the choices I make. Many people make more than I do and don't save as much, many More people make less and drive cars that are twice as expensive as mine.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
  I don't think I played with the words. No debt == freedom. And to have no debt isn't easy mostly due to social pressure - keeping up with the Jones. But it wouldn't really hurt to plan in such a way that before one hits 45 they are debt free and own house among other things.
  - drone 13y ago
    There's a lot of hyperbole about "debt," I see propagated about, especially amongst the far-left and far-right. Debt != Slavery. Conversely, No Debt != Freedom, there are plenty of people I know with no debt who are no more free to do what they please than the people I know with crushing debt. Debt is leverage. Leverage, applied correctly, is an excellent means for accelerating the furtherance of a goal. Is having debt on a house a bad thing? Certainly not in a rising market, or in a market where rents tend to exceed mortgage payments. Additionally, equity gained in that house can be leveraged when times get rough in the future, or a new opportunity arises. Most people do not have the capital power to buy a home outright, even after many years of saving -- if you're spending on rent, you likely cannot save enough for an entire home in one lump sum. Most notably, you'd have to have a very smart growth strategy on that saving to beat both inflation and the rising prices of homes in the area you want to live over the course of the 15-20 years you'd have to employ that strategy. Therefore, for those with the wherewithal to manage their leverage correctly and effectively, a loan makes a lot of sense - they don't have to pay the rents, and they've gambled, successfully or otherwise TBD, against the future price of that home. They can as well make a decision to take gains early, long before ever having had to lay out the entire capital should their local market rise. In the case of 20% down on a $100k house that increases to $200k in value over 3 years with a total of $24k spent in payments over that time = $100k in returns for $44k invested, or a profit of $56k, with no additional rent charges during that time. In addition, the same can run true for a vehicle. If a person needs a vehicle for transportation, they can apply leverage, especially if they do so wisely, to purchase a vehicle better suited to their needs than their normal cash flow allows. I, for example, could be fine with a 20-year old vehicle that needs regular maintenance. I can do that maintenance myself. Someone else may rightly say a 5-6% interest rate over three years is less costly to them than monthly visits to their mechanic. So, this "debt is bad," thing is mostly stated by people who get leveraged beyond their means, or don't understand how to successfully apply the right amount of leverage at the right time. No debt can be as bad for one's fortunes as too much debt. Very few Americans (or otherwise) could consider the idea of owning a house and a car outright at 45 without ever having taken on debt.

orofino 13y ago

Here's the problem though - you don't need to buy the BMW or the suburban McMansion. Save that money instead and when you're in your 40 you can tell the boss that he should give you job to a whipper-snapper, you're headed to Thailand. No one holds a gun to the consumer's head, they just convince themselves they need thing. Then they whine when they haven't saved more than 300k for retirement at age 50 and social security is looking rocky.

homosaur 13y ago
Definitely, and it's of course unfair to paint everyone with a broad brush as I know folks who are making near 100k and are donating 30% or more of their salary to charity. I just feel really angry about the US and the American culture since taking a recent trip overseas to one of those "third world" countries we roll our eyes about. Maybe not even angry, just sad and disappointed. We have so much production here, so much money, so much creativity and people seem to have nothing but fear and animosity. We've taken the richest nation ever assembled and used our resources to build a proto-police surveillance state and empire of nothing when we could have fixed the fucking world or at least fed and clothed most of it. Probably though I just need to quit Facebook again.
lsc 13y ago
>No one holds a gun to the consumer's head, they just convince themselves they need thing. Then they whine when they haven't saved more than 300k for retirement at age 50 and social security is looking rocky. I think that we in the tech industry are... different here. In other industries, there is a /lot/ of pressure to look the part (well, to look an /expensive/ part.) Have you ever seen a real-estate agent in a car worth less than thirty grand? Hell, I've met a few sales folks and managers who wear watches they claim are worth at least half that. Engineering is a little different in that we can dress down, and nobody is going to seriously give us shit for driving a piece of junk car. One can reasonably be a six-figure computer nerd and be a frugal person. A six figure salesman would be... well, he would be breaking a lot of expectations if he lived frugally.
- prostoalex 13y ago

reeses 13y ago

I like this because Bukowski's first purchases when he "made it" was a BMW and a house in a nice neighborhood. I'd write more but, as you say, we only get one chance at this and we're living in the best time ever.

acqq 13y ago
Thanks! http://bukowski.net/timeline/ http://bukowski.net/timeline/ Martin expresses concern for Bukowski's "image" when he buys a new BMW. Volkswagon Beetle is relegated to the garage.
homosaur 13y ago
BMW makes a nice car and there's nothing specifically wrong with buying a nice house, I just mention it as American iconography. Not sure about the cul de sac though.
- reeses 13y ago
  And it wasn't what we would consider a "nice house" in the present day. It's not on a cul de sac and it's no McMansion, just a house that a guy used to living in boardinghouses, bedsits, and apartments for fifty years would be proud of. Water view, but it's of the harbor, which is mainly shipping. Kind of like the difference of a bay view from Oakland, CA and the SF Peninsula, Tacoma/West Seattle and Magnolia, or Newark and Manhattan.

kokotko 13y ago

I think more and more Gen Y people in advanced European countries see owning a car as a failure - you are a fool for wasting money, when transportation can be done cheaply and also often for free. You are basically penalized for owning a car by high taxes, and for those few occassions in a year when you need a car (moving stuff) it's easy enough to rent. Spending your life in traffic jams is just a plain fail. Having to wear a nice suit is also a failure. I would never consider working anywhere where I have to wear a suit. Edit: My overarching point being that attitudes are changing. The 'American dream' doesn't really apply anymore, and especially not everywhere.

sk5t 13y ago
Agreed, the absolutely pervasive 1960s car culture in America seems to be vanishing, and it is on its way to becoming more of a quite-popular hobby. Traffic is worse, insurance is expensive and now may incorporate your credit score, and driving a car gives the police carte blanche to search and violate your civil rights under the flimsiest of excuses. More young people, other than those in very rural areas, are interested in re-urbanizing and riding a bicycle. As both a motorsports / driving enthusiast and bicyclist I think this is great.
gaius 13y ago
I think you may need to recalibrate your idea of failure. I own a car specifically so I can load it up with gear at the weekends and go diving or camping. I know a few people who are rabidly anti-car and ride fixies. They spend their weekends bar-hopping and nursing hangovers. Fair enough, but that's not the lifestyle that particularly interests me. Having to wear a nice suit is not failure either. Both cars and suits are just tools. It's what you use a tool for that matters. Also I'll note if you resent wearing a suit, you have never actually worn a nice one...
- _delirium 13y ago
  Most of the SF people I know who use a car only on weekends just use Zipcar or a rental for that. Depends on precisely how often you use it, but if you're not driving the car daily for commute, the economics of owning vs. renting shift considerably.

danneu 13y ago

For some reason, we see long-term travel to faraway lands as a recurring dream or an exotic temptation, but not something that applies to the here and now. Instead — out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don't really need — we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. In this way, as we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called "lifestyle," travel becomes just another accessory — a smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase the same way we buy clothing and furniture. http://www.vagabonding.net/excerpt/ http://www.vagabonding.net/excerpt/