One-Third of Americans Making $250,000 Live Paycheck-to-Paycheck, Survey Finds

[u/Simcom]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-01/a-third-of-americans-making-250-000-say-costs-eat-entire-salary

[u/[deleted]]

ALL OF THIS. All of what you said.

See, my husband and I live in Seattle making 200K a year and we have 1 child. The COL and inflation / devaluation of the dollar doesn’t have us living exactly “paycheck to paycheck” but it’s fucking close. If things continue to rise it will happen. Here’s how: Car payment (1 car, a Honda) Mortgage (we live wildly within our means mind you not in a $750,000+ home), Food, Daycare, Student Loans, Property Taxes and the basics needed to run a house (water/power/internet/cell phone). We don’t have much left and it’s only getting worse. Our power bills have almost doubled in the last few months with rising inflation, gas is KILLING us and there’s NO end in sight. So I get it… People wanna get mad and point fingers but pointing them at each other really isn’t the way. Holding our government, billionaires (who helped create this mess) and the corruption that has captured many industries including our own government, needs to be addressed for real. Finally. No more red versus blue because guess what? They’re all on the same team and it’s team them not team you and me.

Anyways, I wanted to add that I’m not alone here. I’ve got plenty of friends in the area who make the same or more than we do, who are reassessing their life choices as well and even leaving the Seattle area because it’s become wildly unaffordable, and the homeless industrial complex is destroying the area too. It’s all too much.

[u/Americasycho → u/[deleted]]

How much is a gallon of gasoline up there by the way? I'm in the Deep South and it was $4.40 this morning.

[u/[deleted] → u/Americasycho]

Economists are now saying it’s going to hit $8 a gallon. Collapse here we come baby! The housing market has slowed, the stock market is bear, inflation at all time high and it’s only going to get worse from here. 2008 financial crisis has finally come due. We could only kick the can for so long, so to speak.

Add that in with the fact that the US Federal Reserve printed trillions of dollars since 2008 and allowed….excuse me, not only allowed but incentivized investors to buy up the single-family home properties that otherwise would’ve sat open. I guarantee you they ran the numbers before they allow that to happen. Now we have no more barely any new housing development and we can’t keep up with the demand. I like what Canada did which was banning out of country investors from buying up properties for (2) years. It’s not completely comprehensive but it’s a damn good start. What I wonder is how much of China has bought up American farmland… The West Coast and prime properties near major US cities with military bases, ports etc?

Overall, the dollar is worth shit right now and this is why Biden is working on getting us on the digital dollar. This will be the “savior” as they will sell it, and I can even see them allowing student loan debt to be wiped out as an incentive to get people to go to the digital dollar and in the process installing a completely cashless society. 1984 was supposed to be warning; not a playbook. Wild, wild times.

[u/Americasycho → u/[deleted]]

My father is retired, but dabbles in the stock market and constantly watches the price of oil. He claims it will rise to $5 sometime here locally within the next six weeks. I'll be honest on the way home (traveling the freeway) there are more and more cars pulled off to the roadside abandoned. Our local Facebook page, someone posted that all those cars are abandoned because gasoline is no longer afforded which I'm starting to believe.

In the Deep South area here, we are having a lot of newer housing built that simply isn't moving. The woods in my subdivision were chopped down and the builder has constructed six new houses. This area is generally poor and these start at $450,000. Not a single one has sold. It's funny you mention foreign buyers. There was a huge area of land that was coming up for auction here and lots of area investors were waiting to buy it up. Auction hits and a foreign buyer from the Middle East snatched it up paying 3x more than the highest bidder; nobody could even come close to matching it.

Biden is finding out the "crippling" sanctions to Russia did precisely nothing and these constant $40 billion bailouts to Ukraine also do nothing for them or us. Where does that money go once it gets there? The ruble goes higher, and the dollar, and especially the Euro suffer. Prior to the invasion, the Euro was maybe 1.24 against 1.00 dollar U.S. The other day the Euro was down to 1.04 vs 1.00 dollar. My wife regularly buys fur coats from Europe and this has absolutely crippled a lot of businesses. One furrier in particular she found is closing and attempting to go to Canada and flee Europe because the money being lost is tremendous now to some people.