Quote:
Originally Posted by RuyLopezCUH
This post has bred some of the first-worldiest comments I have ever come across. People are saying "$20/hr is such a hard living. There's no way you could support a family or save for retirement...blah blah blah." Yeah, try working a wage given in China while supporting a family.
+1
Yes, you can live pretty cheaply in a lot of countries. But for those of you who live in places like NYC or Los Angeles, you probably have no idea how cheaply people can live in mcuh of the United Sates. I've seen people on 2+2 say things like "If you can't make at least 50K playing poker, you need to find another job."
Where I live in Michigan, a lot of families raise children on less than that. When raised our three children in the 1980s on a household income quivalent to about 40K a year now.
We moved to a smaller house to save money, but the boys didn't mind--they that it was cool that we were only a block away from Freddy Kruger's grave.*
We couldn't afford a real vacation, but we were pretty good at improvising. We would take one Saturday a month to visit another city, where the boys and I would run a 5K or 10K in in the morning. We visited museums. We ate at the world's largest breakfast table and met Tony the Tiger in Battle Creek. We ran the Maple Syrup Run, had pancakes with local maple syrup, and learned how it was made. We even ran a 5K with a wind chill of -35, and the boys though that it was a great adventure (take that, those of you whining about the recent weather!)
Our meals weren't fancy, but we did it without getting food stamps or any other government benefits. All of our children went to college and later joined the army, and we have three teriffic grandchildren. We have not made a car payment in ten years--we pay cash for used cars.
I haven't been playing full-time for very long (it became our best option due to a long list of circumstances) and I'm not making 50K, or anything close to it. Next year I expect to make about 25K and more the year after that, but since it's tournament poker, you never know. If I hit 50K (which is more than the average personal income in the US, and more than I've made doing anything else) my wife would be ecstatic. That would give us a household income of 100K. Where I live, that would be considered rich. We could easily pay cash for a home much nicer than the one we have now.
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*I thought they were making it up until they walked me to the cemetery, and sure enough, there he was. World War 2 veteran Frederick J. Kruger.