this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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This was some years ago - even before the first Trump presidency - I read a perfectly reasonable sounding piece from someone about how he's struggling as a dual-income family making $400,000 a year. There's the mortgage for the house and the summer home and the vacation condo and the kids' tuitions at prestigious schools and family vacations and the 401ks and the kids' college tuition funds and how there was NOTHING LEFT after the bare necessities!
Yeah, I live more in the realm of having emptied my 401k twice after leaving different jobs because the only other option was homelessness. Have I made bad decisions in life, never intentionally.. but owning a home is being taken off the possibilities for me. At 36 it'll be years before I ever have 1000s in the bank, let alone the 20% of 400,000 or whatever a small house will cost in future. Shit they turned me down to get a car loan and buy a used Kia which left me with a broken down vehicle and losing my job because I couldn't transit 104 miles a day to the decent paying job I landed. So now I'm getting paid 1/3 to half of it on a job I found I can work from home. I'll make rent and food, but retirement is likely out of the picture.
Yeah I'm 42 and my work is well-paid (for me) but not regular. It's been particularly bad lately. I do not even have health insurance since I got divorced this year. I long ago realized I will have to work until I die, and I think most Americans are in the same situation. This is in a low cost of living area, I travel for work as an independent contractor.