financial freedom is a myth peddled by billionaires
I mean, it’s not a myth, billionaires literally have enough financial freedom to live large for 100 lifetimes.
The myth is that they’re willing to share their
rigged casino gambling“speculative investment” derived wealth/winnings, because reminder: nobody can come remotely close to earning a billion dollars through honest labor.You need state support to get that rich.
"It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it!" -George Carlin
Depends on what you mean by state support.
Cause a theoretical ancap hellscape would still have billionaires despite being stateless by definition.
You need power and control to get that rich. The only way that happens today is by the state, but that doesn’t preclude other forms of violence and power.
You aint wrong but modern system of “capitalism” relies on state violence and money transfers from taxpayers to our “dear job creators”
100% totally in agreement
Your previous statement was just more broadly applied than our existing capitalist system and I find the distinctions interesting to discuss, as it helps identify the root.
Walmart couldn’t exist without exploiting the poor. Even though they could pay their workers enough to live, the majority of them are on food stamps: which is just the govt subsidizing exploitation.
You don’t need billions for most definitions of financial freedom. Unless your definition is spend whatever you want, never worry about running out of money, and not have a job, you really don’t need billions.
Capitalism requires most people to be dependent on selling their labor to capitalists at a rate less than it’s worth. No meaningful definition of financial freedom can exist for a majority of the population in a system that creates and supports billionaires.
We could, it’s kind of the the Gene Roddenberry vision, use our burgeoning automation/robotics/AI to do the labor so that Humankind could pursue our passions for everyone’s benefit, but of course those technologies will be patented and used for the exclusive further profit of the non-laboring owner’s club at everyone else’s further expense, exploding our population of homeless peasants with nothing, and “our” government will continue to defend their ability to get away with it at gun point.
It’s like so many things. Human kind should have been united in celebration when we split the atom and harnessed it’s awesome energy generation, a warm light for all mankind, instead our first monkey ass impulse was to use it to incinerate a rival monkey tribe.
Humanity: Just smart enough to be a belligerent danger to ourselves and others.
In the mid to late 1960s economists were predicting 20 hour work weeks and month-long vacations. So it was perfectly reasonable for Gene to imagine a future where nobody had to work.
Month long vacations? That’ll never work. Can you imagine if a developed country took several weeks off in the summer? No one could do that!
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You know what the sad part is? When you tell people that’s exactly what we should be doing, exploring space, etc, they get mad at you and demand you tell them how pursuing anything more meaningful than throwing shit at their enemies benefits them. How it pays their bills. How it pays their rent.
That’s why we can never truly go anywhere.
That’s why I said 100 lifetimes charitably. That’s 10 million from 1 billion, and even less than half of that is enough for a lifetime of responsible financial freedom.
Most wealth doesn’t survive 3 generations, so it’s way less than 100 lifetimes.
Billionaires have poured billions into life extension ventures, many of them believe they’ll be around to spend it themselves forever.
If you drop the spending whatever you want, a few million should be sufficient. If you get a 5% annual return that’s $50,000 a year per million invested. $150-200k a year if you own your house is more than enough to not worry about having enough money. Plus there’s millions in the bank for any truly major expense.
150-200k/year
So the top 10% of income earners?
The threshold is significantly lower since the vast majority of Americans do, in fact, retire.
If you mean that they eventually got placed on Social Security disability then yes the majority do retire. You should see what the nursing homes for people in the government system are like.
That’s not gonna be true for much longer. Watch the Republicans plunder Social Security and Medicaid like they’ve been hankering after for decades.
Ideally I’ll watch them be voted out of power instead.
My definition of financial freedom is not being dependent on an employer. It’s being wealthy enough to be able to walk away from crappy jobs however long it takes to find a better one.
Not true, it seems that way but it is a thing that non-billionaires have. It’s just that those who have such freedom choose to live and often work out of view of everyone else, so you never see them. It plays heavily into confirmation bias. That isn’t to say that the wealth distribution is off, everyone should be in their class including billionaires. They do exist.
financial freedom is a myth peddled by
billionairesbanks and investment brokersThis guy gets it.
I finally got a job that broke six figures.
Housing boom made houses twice as expensive in five years. Monthly grocery bill doubled. Renting doubled. Cost of cars doubled. Every day expenses doubled.
Now consider the majority of people who do not have 6 figure incomes.
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This is so infuriatingly disingenuous that I’m having trouble putting into words an intelligent response.
I would need to triple my income to approach 6 figures. Making that much money may not fundamentally change the way I live my life but it would almost entirely remove my primary stressors. I could afford actual healthcare, I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not my landlord is going to raise my rent to a point where I can no longer afford my home. I could actually save money so that if/when something happens to me I’m not completely fucked over night
You’d only be able to afford it for a little while until literally every industry raised prices overnight, jacking up inflation to the degree that normal people once again would struggle to put food on the table.
We need price control laws and high minimum wage laws to boost up the common man’s buying power so that can’t happen.
I could afford actual healthcare,
Bad news about that, 100k will still not be enough. Maybe 175k.
As someone who had a lot of money, spent time homeless, got fucked by COVID, and am now back in a comfortable place making 6 figures - your comment is way out of touch man.
No it’s not similar in any way, shape or form. Good try tho.
I knew we were fucked when the same happened to me and I still can’t afford a home.
I have a house that was bought back when I made around 35K in 2006 and they where giving out loans to everyone, so nothing great by any means. Had someone come by and ask to buy it earlier this year now that I’ve gotten to a decent career class job and I had to tell them no. Like, have you looked at the price of things lately? My payment is less than most single bedroom appartments these days, no way I’m giving that up to someone. It’s an ugly mess, but at least it’s my ugly mess.
This is essentially where I’m at, too, except bought in 2013 so probably slightly less good price.
I can’t afford to do the fix up work on it properly, so it’s slowly crumbling, but I can’t really afford to move either because this place was on the low end when I bought it and hasn’t improved 😜. I literally can’t find housing for myself and 3 cats for the $550/mth I pay now. Even with my place being worth 3x what I paid for it, I’d end up in a worse or (at best) equivalent place for the same price. May as well just stick with the skeletons I know.
I tell those companies I’ll accept their offer if I have 3x the home’s value in my pocket at the end of the process.
They don’t call back.
Same here. Feels like I’m making the same, but my mortgage is huge now. Sucks.
My partner and I make over $300k, and we’re struggling to buy a 4-bedroom house on the outskirts of Orlando, FL.
As someone who lives in Florida I’ve got to ask, how? When thinking about finances and investments I often feel like I’m in my own bubble and I don’t understand other peoples’ situations, motivations, etc. So I’m genuinely curious. 4-bedroom houses near Orlando can be found in the mid 300s. With your income you should be able to pay in cash after saving for just one or two years (depending on how much savings you’re starting out with). Even if you wanted something more expensive, are mortgages that difficult to get approved even for someone with such a high income?
holy crap. 300k for 4 bedrooms. no wonder people risk the storms.
You probably don’t want to buy a house there, anyway, what with all the insurance companies pulling out of the state.
Your rates are going to be sky high, assuming you can even get insured, which isn’t remotely a guarantee anymore.
Sell your house and move slightly further out of Orlando.
Or don’t have a family size of 7+ and try to live in a city while expecting every kid to have their own room.
Its nice to see someone else mention the doubling. There are news things about gas being expensive but its cheap relative to everything else. People better be ready for eight bucks a gallone once it rights itself. Inflation would suggest 30% odd increase but for what you have to buy its 100% over 2020 prices.
Don’t worry urban planners are making driving more difficult instead of mass transit easier. That way when gas prices double the entire lowest tier of the workforce won’t be able to afford to work. “No one wants to work anymore”
Yep, pulling in 110k this year after bonus at my job and I’m having to DoorDash to get just a bit of breathing room.
$3350 mortgage eats more than half my take home. The rest goes to debt (took out a loan to fix a couple things on the house last year, and student loans coming back now), caring for my aging dog, food, bills, maxed 401k that I’m considering dropping for a while, and a little bit for free spending so I can go on a date or two or out with friends. Even with this mortgage payment this would have been easy on just my salary even 3 years ago (it was easy af with dual income at the time). But the way costs have increased are making me feel broke in a way I haven’t felt in a long-ass time. I always thought that if I could make it to six figures I’d be properly wealthy, but I’m not. I’m barely comfortable.
I doubt your maxing your 401k. I assume you mean the amount needed to get maximum match from your employer?
Pre-tax 401k contribution limit is $22,500 in 2023. Plenty of people are able to contribute up to that limit.
Must be nice. I maxed ira in the past but this is beyond me barring winning the lottery. Of course then I would likely not have a 401k.
Where the fuck do you live with a $3350 mortgage? I pay 1/3 of that for rent and I think that’s too high.
Puget Sound area, a bit north of Seattle.
For a home purchased in the last 3 years, I got a pretty good deal. The floor on rent for a shitty one bed apartment in my city is $1200/month.
It’s also worth noting that the $3350 is my PITI. My strict mortgage is $2875, the rest is property tax to escrow and mortgage insurance.
Ah got it
He lives in a $600,000 house. Probably more.
Edit: he says it’s a $560k house lol
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I’m 45 and I’ve more or less accepted that short of an unexpected and massive windfall, I will never be able to retire, much less experience “financial freedom.”
I’m 43 and literally had this exact conversation today. I work full time for a major financial institution. This shouldn’t be how things work.
Agree yet you work for the enemy.
Because things will certainly change if you keep working without disruption.
If you prefer to ‘bias for action’ there is this: https://youtu.be/TMHCw3RqulY?feature=shared
Lol got em. Yet I live on mostly potatoes and was crippled by a billionaire corporation and haven’t worked or made any income since. Homeless too.
What is actually the definition of “financial freedom”? Having (earned / gained) enough money, so that a person has no need to go to work anymore? If that’s the case, I would expect that number to be much, much lower than 50%.
EDIT: sorry, I just read it in the article. If “financial freedom” just means to work and live more or less without having to worry about financial obligations and what will happen tomorrow, then less than 50% is a rather shocking figure.
Agree. And anyone could quickly go one from side to the other. In need of a expensive surgery? Might lose your financial freedom. Bought an expensive house and lost your job? Goodbye as well.
That’s what a health insurance would be good for. But for many Americans that would equal communism.
Health insurance sucks. I’m all for universal health coverage with the opportunity to pay more for faster service for those who are well off.
Just think - there are tens of thousands of insurance employees who’s job is to calculate risk and develop pricing algorithms such that the company makes money no matter what. There’s no product or value created for humanity. It’s just ensuring that some people who own significant portions of the business keep getting paid.
They screw doctors and patients. Doctors get reimbursed whatever arbitrary predefined rates that were agreed upon during contract negotiations. That’s if insurance gives the green light for the patient to even get the procedure. Why does a middleman decide who gets medical care and how much the doctors should be paid? How is a patient supposed to choose a surgery team that’s all in network?
I get what you’re saying, but fuck insurance. These companies are a parasite on healthcare, housing, and mobility.
Well, yes and no. It should probably be a state-run system or at least a heavily regulated system where the companies are limited in their profit making. No idea how an ideal system could look like. Here in Germany there is a two-fold system, which a generic public health insurance (with several companies offering those insurance services), where every employee pays a certain percentage of his salaries as insurance fee (actually the total fee is split 50/50 between employer and employee). Service is rather basic, but sufficient.
And then there is the possibility to get a private health insurance contract, if your income is above a certain level, which interestingly is (for the most time) lower than that in the general public insurance, but service is much better (e.g. you usually get doctor appointments much faster if you are a “private patient”). The only downside is that you don’t know how much you will have to pay when you get old, and once you are out of the public insurance you can not go back (only if you income falls below the private insurance entry level, which is rather unlikely).
It’s not ideal but it works for the most part and with some exceptions (like new teeth, where you have to pay a substantial part by yourself) you don’t have to be afraid of any health problems, operations or whatever, because that’s all covered. Those insurance companies are treated like public service companies and prices for medication and medical (doctor) services are subject to agreement between the government and the medical associations representing doctors, hospitals etc., but I guess those companies still make profits and the doctors have good earnings.
I get your point, but even with a certain level of protection you’re probably still better off than with no protection at all. However, the system should also not be based on profits and shareholder value, that’s true.
In other news, water is wet
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.
If, like me, you didn’t have the reference: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2r85h2
I’ve known that from the Tool song Third Eye. Good to know the original sauce. Reference: https://on.soundcloud.com/MLXsj
Thinking about consciousness and stuff is fun. Like what if loneliness is an innate property of a singular unified consciousness and in its searching for another it creates compartmentalized versions of itself until ultimately complex unique lifeforms are formed. What if life is just the complexity of knots tied by consciousness searching for another? What if time is the entropy of those knots becoming untied?
This is why psychology is considered a soft science
Bill Hicks, I reckon?
Really? Do they? That’s very interesting. Tell me, is the over half more like 99%?
I think you knew exactly what idea they were saying. Agency, the ability to control your own life, varies. Clearly and obviously a regular person in the West has more agency than say a regular person in North Korea. It is not an one-off switch. The ever growing wealth inequality is making the population shift more and more to the slave side of things. That doesn’t mean that you are a slave it means your papa was less of a slave compared to you.
This is why being a lolitarian makes you stupid. It bifurcates slavery and freedom. It defines force to be a specific term, that no one else uses, and declares victory in the game it is playing with itself
It’s really disingenuous to compare US-only data to unrelated generalizations of other countries that function under different cultural and economic systems. But I feel like you already know that.
70% of Americans retire.
I think the stat you’re referencing is for people aged 65-69. That means 30% of those people are still working. That number should be much lower, like 0.
That’s how society is, brother, literally 1% controls the world in their favor and keeps the wealth, impoverishing the 99%.
It’s been 10,000 plus years. Let’s change it, brother.
i agree, but not by passive aggressively shitting on people’s life choices in a social media comment section.
If they choose to stand in an apple line for 12 hours then I have no apologies to offer. But I get it.
I would also venture to say that applies to 90% of us. “Over half” is a fucking laughable fake figure.
I mean, 90% is over half…
Yeah, but it’s marketing jargon to make it seem like less of a deal. When someone says “over half” do you immediately assume they’re talking in the 90% range, or closer to 60%?
Probably the half that make $31k or less.
Looking for a job is insanely depressing when you get to see just how many jobs-white collar, blue collar, fast food, whatever- all pay absolutely disgusting wages one person can’t live of off…
I’m now in a 2 income household with fewer kids as they grow up, and to us it feels more like we are close always, just no hope of ever actually getting there, if that makes sense. Always almost enough.
Which is better than my previous experience but since it’s happening later in life, still wouldn’t expect to ever stop having to earn money by working. I have never expected to retire though, it would take - as someone else noted - a windfall, luck, not effort. Effort has taken us as far as it can.
Sheeit I’m one step above homelessness living off plasma donations.
I’d go for this except I got a false HIV-positive back in '89 and no matter what I do I can’t get it off my blood donation record. :(
I do ok, but all my debt and bills are telling me I need to get on this gravy train
Clearly the answer is work harder and get a 3rd job. Eventually you’ll be a millionaire!
I’d have thought more. With a big gaping chasm in between.
49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.
I’m going to ignore that pesky 100% thing for the moment. Apparently we can’t even agree on what “Financial Freedom” means. Defining the metric you’re polling seems pretty critical if you want a consistent or useful answer. “Over half” is still burying the lede, though - less than one in ten fall into their personal version of that 150% noted above. Aside from the “American families are financially fucked” though, I’m not sure there’s any hard data to extract from this.
--
“Peter don’t ya call me cause I just can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store.”
Don’t also forget that we’re talking about what people say about their own financial position - which may be different from what their financial position actually is. Self-reporting is never accurate, because people report what they feel or are aware of, which is different from objective facts, to a greater or lesser degree.
Between letting individuals define the terms of the question they’re going to answer, and then self-reporting, this “study” goes beyond useless and into detrimental.
I agree, the definition is a real problem. While still interesting the survey is pretty screwed.
I thought financial freedom was being independently wealthy. Idle rich. Apparently I was wrong, it means working class but with some “bonus” money. Maybe still struggling but struggling less than most working stiffs.
How free can you be if you still have to work full time?
There is a point in income where you have the choice, the choice to move, the choice to switch jobs, the choice to leave your partner, etc.
That is freedom. A lot of Americans are just stuck exactly where they are.
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That’s a good point. I make well into the 6-digits and the one reason I don’t believe that anyone under 7-digits will ever be “financially free” is because of the for-profit healthcare system. One bad accident or cancer and I’m fucked for a long time if not the rest of my life as is anyone that can’t just shrug off 5 to 6-digit bills.
Now if I were somewhere that offered universal health care and I was making what I was, I’d consider myself to be financially free. So I guess I fall into the 46.2% category.
Same. I’m financially stable. Meaning I can hit a few bumps and I’ll be fine. But I don’t think it’s possible to be ’ financially free’ when at any time I could suddenly have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical debt.
I can roughly estimate potential pit falls with my home. And home insurance is reasonably reliable for catastrophic scenarios. Even if they aren’t, bankruptcy is still feasible. The same cannot be said about healthcare. Insurance plans are extremely opaque and while they claim to have terms such as ‘out of pocket maximum’ that should**** in theory limit your losses, there are endless stories about how little that holds up when put to the test.
Proper healthcare coverage would be the single biggest impact on American stability. Nothing else is even close.
You can add disability to this. If I can’t work I pretty sure im buggered even if for some reason we get universal healthcare (I guess being disabled, if you can navigate to the point of getting it, you would have medicaid but what comes in every month would not be adequate to stay where I live or such)
“This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill, fifteen percent concentrated power of will, five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain, and a hundred percent reason to remember the name.”
