Lol at people being robbed of their “natural urge” to eat at Per Se by Jeff Bezos. This forum has gone from morons saying “taxation is theft” to morons saying “private wealth is theft” without a day in middle with a rational position.

I'm not seeing someone bringing home < 3k a month spending 800-1000 of it on food. This feels a lot like old people not understanding why youngsters aren't buying houses right out of school like they did and totally not getting that houses cost like 20k when they bought them.

How a generation can become accustomed to faux prosperity in one chart:

Its actually the best time to teach 20 year olds to be responsible with their money, and to build good money habits early.

If you are talking about free health care and education, I have no argument there.

Americans buy so much useless junk, eat so much garbage food. Telling them to cut down on it is like taking away their 2nd amendment rights.

"But I'll be a hermit!! What will my friends think of me?!?"

1982 is about 3 years after income stopped matching productivity isn't it?

Food for thought:

I don't have a problem with teaching people how to better utilize their money but the major impediment to the poor not having as much retirement as the rich isn't their spending habits; the rich are far worse at that than the poor, but the fact that they're poor.

CDL,

Most people have student loans. You apparently didn’t, because of course you didn’t.

Lol. Nobody is talking about the poor. We’re talking about people making 40k who think they have to live like a hermit to save for retirement . Pretty close to an average 30 year old with a job.

Its 40K now?

Out of interest how much income tax would someone pay in Yanklandia on a 40K income?

Run it up the income scale how you like. Why do you think the upper classes have more for retirement than the average American? It is because Wall Street guys cook at home more often than the average worker?

No, it’s not 40k now. Making 30k is usually a valid reason to not save as I said before. People making 40k (which is around the median for employed 30 year olds) usually don’t have a great reason not to save. Look up the taxation yourself hoss.

Yes, making more money is a very good way to increase retirement funds. Great insight! Unfortunately that’s not an option for most people. Saving more is.

Please write us budget for a 30 year old bringing home $2800 a month (40k a year in WA state).

is this guy a Sklansky relative?

Poor, rich and everything in between aren't exactly castes:

No they're not exactly castes

I did. I had somewhere in the $70-80k range (forget the exact amount) in student loans. Why would you say "because of course you didn't?" What about me would indicate that I didn't have student loans?

3k gross or net? I spent basically exactly that my first year working with ~3k net a month. And honestly the biggest thing I felt like I had to do to keep expenses down was I spent a lot less on food and drink than I otherwise would have liked.

Student Loans=$900-$925
Food+Drink=$800-1000
Rent (with roommate)=$625
Car+Gas+Insurance=$300
Utilities+Cable+Internet (split 2 ways)=$125
Incidentals=$50

$900 a month on food and drink is only $30 a day. Its pretty trivial for someone in their 20s with a social life to spend $30 a day on food and drink.

3k gross and those numbers are pretty light. A 20 year old is usually paying about the same as their car payment in insurance 300 all would mean a really crappy car that you didn't fill up more than once a month. $250 for utilities is also pretty light. You should be commended though for trying to pay off your student loans so fast and avoiding any other credit card debt.

10K a year in debt paydown. Well done.

Thanks for the compliment. One thing I was unfortunately taught all my life was that credit cards are evil and thus I never had one until I was 24 years old. I think there are meaningful merits to credit cards (specifically the rewards and the float) and wish children were taught to use them responsibly.

I leased a car because lease payments were meaningfully less than the cost to buy it (Was $204/mo). My roundtrip to work was ~4 miles and I filled up on gas less than once a month (probably about once every 6-7 weeks). I think my insurance was around $900/yr but its possible that I am a little light on that.

Water was included in my apt lease so it was ~$150 for cable/internet and ~$100 for electric (which was actually less in spring and fall months).

This was 7 years ago and rents are definitely up since then so you're looking at another $200 a month there probably. I think you can still manage to get a car for $50-75 more a month.

One thing I did have going for me is my health insurance through work was only $4/mo at that time (since then I've seen the radical price increases trump discusses and I now pay $5/mo). While my max out of pocket was $1700/yr I thankfully didn't have health issues that resulted in unplanned expenses.

Plenty of people with student loans have payments in the $300-600 range which would afford them the money in their budget to spend the way I did with similar net pay. It would obviously be more difficult on $3k gross.

Thankfully, while I didn't overspend my salaried means, I did have money in the stock market from poker so I had a safety net if it was needed. While I will say this didn't come from traditional work it was indeed earned rather than inherited or gifted to me.

wasn't 30k. It was 45k gross so like ~36k net.

Yeah, reading quickly so missed that, well done regardless. So on a 50K salary you would easily put away 10K a year plus. Obviously not in cities like manhattan or LA. But that's pretty good to be honest.

900 dollars a month on that income is fiscally irresponsible for food and drink.

Only $30 a day. Lolol

I'm not even disagreeing. So there is a lot of room for money to be cut out of a budget like this and save. Cutting it to $600 still leaves you enough to eat out and go out with friends to a bar every weekend as a person in their 20s and put the additional $300 away in a 401k/IRA or other investment vehicle.