Comment on Survey: More Than 1 In 4 Americans Feel They Need To Make $150,000 Or More To Live Comfortably
ChexMax@lemmy.world 20 hours agoWhat about taxes? Health Insurance? Car insurance or transportation budget. You can live comfortably on $10 a day for food?? $3.30 a meal? That eats up the rest of that $1300 a month and leaves nothing for entertainment, savings, gifts or dating. Nothing left for meeting that health insurance deductible so you still can’t go to the doctor. Survivable? Absolutely! Doesn’t sound comfortable to me though.
tburkhol@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Don’t really have taxes at that income level. In the US, ACA pays full insurancne premium (currently, that will change if the billionaire tax cut passes), and ‘wellness checkups’ are $0 out-of-pocket by law. Most of my dinner recipes are around $2.50/serving at 900 calories. I’m able to walk most places I go, but car insurance is $100/month. Don’t feel like dating, raising kids, or making big vacations. I average something around $7-800/month on ‘entertainment’ like video games & hobby materials, which leaves $300-400 savings. $350/month is 10%, which is around 2x the US average savings rate (fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT). Savings for emergencies like insurance deductible and for retirement.
But that’s my point: my housing probably isn’t everyone’s idea of ‘comfortable,’ my diet is pretty carb-heavy and probably not everyone’s idea of ‘comfortable.’ I like it, though. It feels comfortable to me; I don’t consciously restrict any of my spending - all the numbers I’ve given you are post hoc analysis. I’ve been doing it for a decade.
I don’t dispute people feeling like they need $150k to live comfortably. Lots of people want kids. Lots of people want to take a nice vacation time-to-time. There’s a massive propaganda machine out there trying to convince everyone that they need just a little more than they have right now to feel good about themselves, and I believe that propaganda starts wearing thin by the time you get to $150k, $200k. They’ve got to live their life; I can only live mine.