The comments section on that article is full of rich people squirming and it is positively delightful.
Indeed!
And yet we have elected two Presidents in recent history, Obama and Clinton, who came from disadvantaged backgrounds. Perhaps the problem is that we live in a meritocracy that now places an emphasis on intellectual skills, which may be passed down genetically?
Heh.
For fuck's sake, normally you have to get a few drinks into the sort of person that comments on the NYT to get them to embrace Charles Murray.
What the fuck do they manufacture in Teton, Wyoming?
4: Some of those names are county names. Teton is the county where Jackson is located and similarly Summit County in UT is home to Park City.
And if you're not familiar with Jackson, it's a mega rich ski town just south of the Teton and Yellowstone parks and WY also just happens to be one of the few states with no income tax.
It's a great place, but not as great as you might think if you come at the name from a background conversant in French.
They still do the freedom fries thing?
In Wyoming they summarize Proust.
So, I was trying, and failing to find the thread that lead to the
quote darb put here. I failed, despite having the exact text. Anyway, I also found this post, which is relevant to the "void where prohibited" thread. I always did like that guy Stanley, but had no idea I'd appropriated his thread title.
On topic, because it shows I was prematurely woke to this issue.
I see that the link's author, or maybe his editor and publisher, used upper middle class instead of upper class in the forthcoming book title.
My uber WASPy college roommate was from Jackson Hole. Her parents were themselves old money, and architects to the stars.
I thought the first article was going to be about a common grad school phenomenon, where rich kids pretend to be broke, and then bitch about living "below the poverty line" on 30K per year.
Maybe this exists, but it would be great to have metric for "you're actually wealthy, shut up" that was much more fine-grained than income. I don't know what all should be in the bundle, but if you can 1) put your kids through any college debt-free 2) save for retirement 3) own a home in a decent place and maybe etc., you're rich enough to shut up. And whether those things are true for any given person will depend on where they live, how old they are, how many kids they have, and so on. I would just like to know how many people are rich in that sense, because it would give us a sense of whether people don't feel rich because they can't afford the bundle, or because their neighbors have a boat, or because everyone is an asshole. This is all setting to the side the fact that if you're close-but-not-quite at bundle-level wealth, you should think about how most of the rest of the country lives, rather that what will put you in the club.
When Obamacare is killed and the pre-existing condition protection goes away, you'll need to put something in there about health care.
15: Thanks. I forgot about having to use Yahoo to find stuff here.
And whether those things are true for any given person will depend on where they live, how old they are, how many kids they have, and so on.
Making a geographic adjustment makes sense, but lets not go nuts about it. On the one hand, I know lots of people with household incomes way into the six figures can't buy houses or save for both college and retirement in some parts of the country, but those same people could if they moved to someplace like Toledo. The jobs of the sort that let them earn six figures while doing interesting work aren't going to be there in Ohio, because Ohio is a forsaken land of bareness, but jobs with pay sufficient to buy a house and save for retirement/college are. If you start positing a definition where a public school teacher in Pittsburgh is "rich" and a bunch of software developers in the Bay Area aren't, people will laugh at you.
The problem with 14 is that housing policy has made living in many desirable cities an expensive luxury. Someone who lives in San Francisco and makes what I make is certainly nowhere close to Oggeds 14, but they get to live in San Francisco! They're rich but also spending a huge amount of money on an amazing luxury good. They're not less rich than me! I don't get to live in San Francisco!
(Of course what we need is to find a way of making living in those cities not such a luxury. But it doesn't mean people are less rich!)
This struck me as way off:
This favored fifth at the top of the income distribution, with an average annual household income of $200,000, has been separating from the 80 percent below.puts you in the top 20% at about $115,000 as of 2014. You get near top 5% at 200K.
I don't know who is correct here, but it's interesting to me that I instinctively trust Wikipedia more than the New York Times.
This bit is structured more to bolster his point than to illuminate:
Collectively, this top fifth has seen a $4 trillion-plus increase in pretax income since 1979, compared to just over $3 trillion for everyone else. Some of those gains went to the top 1 percent. But most went to the 19 percent just beneath them.
And you can see the way this is written that the author is concealing a big number here:
Collectively, this top fifth has seen a $4 trillion-plus increase in pretax income since 1979, compared to just over $3 trillion for everyone else. Some of those gains went to the top 1 percent. But most went to the 19 percent just beneath them.
Wikipedia, again, citting economist Alan B. Krueger, says the top 1% got $1.1 trillion in additional annual income since 1979 (through 2007), suggesting that maybe the income gain for the other 19 percentiles about matched that of the rest of the country. That's a somewhat different story (and a story a bit more in line with Piketty).
If I'm getting the math right here, the full figures suggest that the 1% picked up in the neighborhood of 15% of all income gains; the 19% and the 80% each picked up about 42%. Still lots of upward redistribution to the 19%, which got double its "fair" share, but the top 1% got 15 times.
I wonder what we should think of as "fair" in this regard. I wonder what the comparable figures were for the 40 years prior to 1979.
18 and 19 seem right. I'm just not sure if the answer is there you go, that's why so many people don't feel rich, or that living in a city is the UMC equivalent of the big-screen TV you can't afford, or if we need a better definition of well-off, or better housing policy, or what.
Anybody running against Kaisch can feel free to use that.
Pf, it's no contradiction that the average income for the top 20 is 200k and the threshold is just over half that.
I feel richer not wanting to live in San Francisco.
I don't find the question 'who is rich' particularly productive. Should we have a couple of additional tax brackets at 500k, 1M, and 2M. Yes we should. No one worth listening to disagrees, right?
I think of it as a way to diagnose why link 1 is basically true. If a sizable number of people who seem rich are unable to afford things that we (as a society) think of as markers of affluence, that's good to know. Put another way, it's a way to tease out difference among the top 10% percent.
I've got very little sympathy for people who make six figures and up who argue that they're actually poor because they live in San Francisco or New York, especially if they moved there themselves. Yes, what you're paying for is to live in an area that lots of people want to live in because it affords you access to critical industry centers, world-class arts and culture scenes, and great educational opportunities for your kids. If you decide you want the money more than you want those things, you can live somewhere else -- but the fact is that you're paying for amenities not available to most of the population.
And anyone who makes these complaints while sending their kids to private school can go get fucked.
20: And yet, day care in Boston can eat up an entire median-income salary. I have thought about saving up for it to spread out the cost -kind of like college, which is crazy, really.
What exactly is making day care cost so much?
My high school social studies teacher in the mid 90s used the term "favored fifth"- our district, wealthy NYC suburb, exactly fit the bill. Even the fuckups in our high school were going to end up fine unless they killed themselves at a frat party or driving drunk.
30. Day care providers live in Boston as well, maybe?
Anyway, I have a house with a nice patio. I'm drinking a beer while grilling corn and chicken. No steak, because I'm not rich.
If I serve the chicken while it's still red in the center, it'll be just like steak.
I find grilled chicken breasts to be too low on fat to taste good, so I butter them at the table.
34:
I started substituting steak for nights out to eat, though I'm doing that less now that I'm finally out of the money-making life and pursuing my lifelong dream of being a broke graduate student.
Why not just get chicken breasts with the skin on?
Not everybody in the house is convinced we need a high fat diet.
I used to put butter on my sliced turkey at Thanksgiving. There is nothing that doesn't taste better with butter. But, I would have to say cooking chicken with skin >>> cooking it dry and adding butter later.
All my neighbors with windows that let me see their kitchen have much nicer appliances than we do. Also, they don't have so much odor of urine coming from the shrubbery at the edges of their patios. But I don't feel the need to keep up with the Jones on everything.
37
As a broke grad student, I rarely cook meat at home, but when I go out (somewhere cheap) and the steak option is the same price or close to the chicken or veggie option, I always order it. My friends probably assume I subsist on a 90% beef diet.
Thinking about it, the meat I cook most is fish, because our local fancy supermarket has cheap frozen fish fillets, and I trust that their general meat quality (they only sell organic & free range everything else). I feel like most millennials I know who eat meat don't cook fish but do cook chicken, which is sort of backwards, because fish is really easy to cook and won't kill you if it's underdone, but with chicken there's a 30 second point between done enough to not give you salmonella and overdone.
One of the few things I miss about Nebraska is the ability to go out and have a 5 start quality steak dinner without really worrying about the cost, even as a starving postdoc.
Steak is easy to cook too, but really expensive. I don't know if I've ever actually purchased steak. At the local fancy store it's $15/lb.
44: That's actually getting a little more difficult. Chains are fucking up everything.
Costco chicken. $4.99 for enough meat for 4-5 meals.
Maybe this exists, but it would be great to have metric for "you're actually wealthy, shut up" that was much more fine-grained than income. I don't know what all should be in the bundle, but if you can 1) put your kids through any college debt-free 2) save for retirement 3) own a home in a decent place and maybe etc., you're rich enough to shut up. And whether those things are true for any given person will depend on where they live, how old they are, how many kids they have, and so on.
Sort of a BMI for wealth.
What exactly is making day care cost so much?
The big one is legal constraints on child:teacher ratio, which is lower in more progressive states.
As a millennial I cook more chicken than fish because fish is more expensive. And cheap fish I think is likely to be more hazardous (in terms of containing heavy metals etc.) than cheap chicken.
43: It depends. We could get quite a few meals out of a whole chicken, roasted (which is hard to overcook), then turned into stock for some kind of soup. Fish was more expensive per meal. I don't know how your friends are doing it, but that was our cheapest non-vegetarian food.
Re: wealth, we live in a pretty low-cost area of the country, and I'm trying to figure out how people manage their finances. I know objectively, we make approximately 3X median income, so we must be "rich," but it definitely doesn't seem like it subjectively. I am starting to assume that no one has any savings and that they are all shopping at thrift stores and garage sales. I'm trying to figure out how to lower our costs to similar levels and save like mad while we're here. A step-sister of AJ's mentioned that their house was worth about $92K, apropos our house-hunting. (Their house is pretty nice, on the outskirts of "town." I hadn't quite put that together on my own.) Our overall monthly costs here aren't much different than DC, oddly enough. Slightly lower, but not a lot. Rent is a lot less, but I have to own a car, and car payments, gas, and auto insurance eat up most of the difference in rent. Thank goodness we don't want kids. I gather they're spendy.
50: You probably spend all your money on avocados and diamonds.
I've recently switched from beluga caviar to regular sturgeon, so I can better understand the common people.
49: In some states, I think you can use the First Amendment as a substitute for even the lower staffing standards, plus to avoid inspections.
54: Avocados, yes! Probably that's it. We're a little too old to be millenials, but we are definitely killing the diamond/real estate/Applebee's market so far in favor of avocado toast, which will be dinner tomorrow night because we have no air conditioning and it is supposed to be 90.
The article is mostly about the ways meritocracy is a joke, how the top 20% ensure there's no economic mobility and how they've no sense of shame about it.
I guess the fish/chicken price trade off varies. In general I wouldn't buy cheap fish, but I really trust this supermarket. I only buy free range meat, so it does really limit it. I also live in a neighborhood with three grocery stores and for many items Whole Foods is the best value for money, so that tells you about the options.* Costco chicken is cheap, but you have to be a Costco member and have some sort of easy transportation. I used to cook whole chickens, but then I found pre-roasted chickens were actually, lb for lb, cheaper, given that they're made out of chickens on their sell-by date. Now I buy those chickens and make stock from the bones, or if I need uncooked chickenI tend to buy thigh meat. The people I know who cook chicken over fish buy boneless chicken breasts, so not really that into money saving. I am a single person, so if I were cooking for a family regularly buying and cooking a whole chicken would probably make sense.
*Actually, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much.
Norwegians have a history of enjoying obviously inedible fish.
Or at least eating it. I can't tell if they enjoy it or not. I suspect they don't know either.
60
With enough butter, anything is edible.
Inside of a butter, it's too greasy to read.
Besides fish and butter, my other food group is bread and cheese. I could eat bread and cheese for three meals a day, with some fruit and vegetables spaced in between.
Fish, potatoes, butter, and bread and cheese is basically 90% of the Norwegian diet.
50: I made a budget that worked a lot better than previous attempts by working on an accrual basis - putting together not just regular expenses but all the irregular ones (clothes (may be more irregular for me than for most), vacations, shows, miscellaneous electronics, gifts, etc.), normalizing them to monthly, such that it all averages out over time. And I have in fact been achieving the target of extra monthly savings as a result.
I also made a homebrew budget tracking workbook in GSheets with a form to input and categorize expenses on as they happen, so I can track routinely by category. I'm sure there's software or apps that can do all this for you, but I feel more comfortable with something I made myself. Anyway, having the habit of tracking probably helps just as much as having an accrual-style budget. (Among all the standard data, I have to track in the form whether each expense is a) indispensable, (b) dispensable, or (c) dispensable but serving the interests of social ties or personal growth.)
It looks like "mensalize" is not a word analogous to "annualize", but it should be. (It is a word, but with a highly obscure/archaic ecclesiastical meaning.)
53:
not quite, but I do spend a lot on third wave coffee, craft beer, and craft liquors. I'm confident that I spend more money on beer alone than on food, with the caveat that I shop at really cheap Latino or Asian supermarkets for food.
Given avocado prices where I shop, I'd have to eat 5 avocados a day (at least) to equal what I spend on coffee and booze per day. (And I'm allergic to avocado, though I eat them occasionally anyway because they're so good. 5 a day is more than I'd tolerate though.)
70
How much are avocados around you? At the cheapest place they are between $.50-.99 ea, depending. That's between $2.5-$5 on coffee and booze, which isn't nothing but isn't very much, either.
I feel like cheapness often gets in the way of my productivity, because every time I think about working in a coffee shop, I think about paying money for something I could make more cheaply at home, so I stay home and then fuck around on the internet.
I've tried to resist standard millennial taste shift with coffee and booze. I've sort of succeeded, in that I drink Whole Foods brand coffee (surprisingly cheap!), and WF $4 wine (it's the sweet spot of their cheap wine, but their $3 wine is more drinkable than Charles Shaw). I've been trying to get my friends to embrace Miller High Life as a thing, and it worked about 6 years ago but now they're all too bourgie for that. I end up bringing wine to things more often, because no one knows your bottle of wine cost $5, but people can tell that you've brought Hamm's over say, Goose Island.
I've been trying to get my friends to embrace Miller High Life as a thing, and it worked about 6 years ago but now they're all too bourgie for that.
Have you tried PBR?
I was thinking around $7/day on coffee and booze, which yeah prob is more than 5 avocadoes.
I wrote most of my dissertation in a third wave coffee shop. I used to feel bad about the money but I realized the boost in productivity is worth it. 1) I'm more productive when I change environments, 2) once I spend money on something unnecessary like coffee I feel guilty and am very ready to start work as soon as the money leaves my pocket. I've had bad experiences trying to work from home all day---at some point I have to change environments, and I like the atmosphere at coffee shops or certain bars more than my office or the library.
And yeah once I got on the coffee snob wagon I couldn't bring myself to spend money on crappy coffee.
That had been in my head all day. And now I'm free of it.
74.3
The nice thing about drinking cheap instant coffee for two years is it really resets your palate. Even Folgers tastes good after that. My tastes are slowly getting reset, but I'm hoping to hold them at WF brand coffee for as long as possible.
74.2
I should maybe do this, because in the long run not writing a dissertation is more expensive than $4 lattes.
Thank you very much for the information you shared, it's all I've been looking for
I'm surprised no tech company (or Costco/BJs/Sam's themselves, although it would cut into membership) has put together a warehouse club sharing app or service. A bunch of people enter in stuff they want from a list of what's available and see the price for how much they want and a comparison to regular store prices. If enough people want some item on a given day to justify purchasing the bulk product, someone who's a member goes and buys stuff then divides it up among the requesters. Like a farm share except from warehouse stores. I guess maybe the savings vs. regular supermarkets isn't enough to support whatever profit the app would try to make from subscribers and the expense of paying someone to shop/divide/repackage/deliver items.
82: How is that an improvement over people just joining the warehouse stores on their own? I guess it reduces the amount of time most members have to spend shopping, so that's something.
My problem with Costco is that I am a single person who lives in a 300 sq ft studio with a tiny freezer. Even if I could save money shopping there, I don't have the space to buy stuff in bulk. I went a few times last year with a friend with a membership, back when I lived in a bigger place with roommates, but I feel like I spent more than I saved, because I'd be tempted to buy way more than I needed of any one thing, and then either I'd be forced to try to use it up before it went bad, or I'd just throw out the stuff that went bad. I can see how if I had a family and a large home it would be great, but I can think of about 3 items that I'd really benefit from buying at costco.
82
That seems like a lot of work for minimal cost savings, especially on the part of the person organizing it.
Maybe if it were something with a big price differential? Like, I bought my memory foam pillow at Costco for $25, I suppose that if they are $50 elsewhere, someone would pay $35 (cost plus $10 fee) to have someone get it for them at Costco. I just don't know how many items really have the price differential to make it worth the hassle.
84: I've had that problem too. I do still buy a lot of things at Costco, because I have easy access to it and it's way cheaper for a lot of things than the regular stores here, but I need to be very mindful of my space constraints at home.
E.g. if you don't have a large family so you don't need 20 pounds of potatoes, you just want 4 pounds and they're 30 cents a pound at Costco but $1/pound at regular supermarket, save a few bucks. Or paper goods that don't go bad but take up storage space. Partly I'm thinking of it as a way to counter the "need money to save money" phenomenon that screws poor people. If you have a car and a bigger house and can afford $50 up front for a yearly membership you can then save money buying in bulk (or even not in bulk- milk comes in single gallons but is about half the price of regular stores. See also chicken above.)
|| Nearly every hotel room in Idaho is already booked for August 20. I'm not going to go to Lincoln, St. Louis, or Spartanburg, though. |>
I'm still using the batch of paper towels I bought at Costco 2-3 years ago. On the other hand, there are a couple of things they sell for less in larger amounts that I buy regularly that are enough to make it worthwhile.
I get the rotisserie chicken every now and then, but as a single person, it's a lot of chicken. I've tried freezing the leftovers after the first couple of meals, but that hasn't turned out great. Nowadays, I don't eat the skin for the most part, which means I can eat more of the rest. It's still cost effective if I don't finish the chicken, but it's so wasteful I usually just over eat.
52
Statistically speaking I'm pretty sure that most people actually don't have any savings.
88
It maybe could be a good idea, but as I'm thinking of this program now the sort of people who don't have money for membership but have the technological ability/disposition to do an online Costco foodshare program seem mainly like they'd be broke millennial grad student types, rather than actual poor people. Also, you'd have to plan ahead pretty carefully to order your groceries online, rather than buying things as needed at the store. Like, say, I want to make potatoes for dinner tonight, I can either spend $4 for 4 lbs right now, or $1.20 for 4 lbs and get them...a day later? A week later?
I guess you could do it more like a CSA where you agree for a weekly subscription to get a random assortment of sale costco items, but with the chance to select certain categories (e.g. meat, paper goods, produce, dairy).
Also, paper goods don't go bad, but storing 200 rolls of toilet paper takes up a lot of space. I would get TP there last year, but now I don't really have the space to store that much toilet paper. Storing meat also requires freezer space.
90.2
I had that problem. Last year I had a week before leaving for a month-long trip, so I got a rotisserie chicken at costco figuring it would be enough meat for one person for a week. I ended up gorging on nothing but chicken for at least two meals a day for the entire week, and still couldn't come close to finishing it. I froze the leftovers, but ended up throwing them out when I got back. It was indeed very cost effective but I felt terrible about wasting that much chicken.
Are you using the word 'gorge' to refer to eating 2 ounces of meat at a setting?
I was just assuming the chickens are bigger in America.
89: Eclipse people have been looking forward to this one for a very long time. I'd started sorta planning back in '14 but realized in the first half of last year that a trip to America was not going to be compatible with Helsinki Worldcon. And I've seen two total eclipses (Mexico in '91 and Germany [so convenient!] in '99) but not yet been to a Worldcon.
feel like most millennials I know who eat meat don't cook fish but do cook chicken, which is sort of backwards, because fish is really easy to cook and won't kill you if it's underdone, but with chicken there's a 30 second point between done enough to not give you salmonella and overdone
Which is why sous vide is amazing for chicken breast, as you can get it really juicy without worrying about it being dangerous.
Trader Joe's frozen fish isn't too pricy. They have a silver brite salmon which isn't amazing but is affordable.
I figure a meal is half a chicken, unless I'm feeding more than just myself.
I make no bones about being rich. Before retiring we had DINKY professional incomes, our house is paid off and if we move it'll be to something smaller, and we have enough savings that without Weimar inflation we're protected against the unforeseeable.
However, we live in a fairly cheap part of the country. I can think of a lot of places, even leaving London and Oxford aside, where we'd be not much more than OK, if that.
67 to 52? It's good advice. I already use Mint to track everything (maybe a wee bit compulsively). My comment was more about being, by most measures, financially fine, and still feeling anxious and pinched. I just keep comparing myself to folks around me and thinking, "Huh, I wonder how they afford that." And I continue to be amazed that the "low" cost of living is chewed up by a variety of expenses I didn't entirely predict (like cars).
Insurance fraud is a good way to make ends meet.
I got the idea from a TV commercial warning viewers about the horrible consequences of insurance fraud. It reminded me of the commercials about the horrors of unprotected sex and it turned out that was just great.
I am definitely in the 'shut up' class, which I think of as upper middle class or rich enough to be safe from most of the vicissitudes of life.
I still, and I feel like it's important to bang on about this every time someone makes this point, am nowhere near 'rich enough to use my money to exert significant political power'. That's a real, meaningful class difference. And while I don't mind people calling me rich, and I'm all for political change that redistributes income from me to poorer people, I really want to keep it clear that the class I'm a member of is not the economically top level -- there's a level above me that is significantly, importantly different in terms of economic and political power.
I bet you could have been, if you'd have worked at being evil and such.
Well, right. If I'd made partner at either of the big firms I've worked at, that would have popped me up to the next level -- the kind of people who are meaningful political donors, and who have multigenerational trusts to protect family capital, and so on.
But it's funny: part of the reason you're not in the politically-sought group is that you're in NYC, right? At least at the local level.
Say Heebieville is 50K. What is your cohort that's about 50K - your neighborhood? I assume NYC has neighborhood associations, and you could exert significant power there just by showing up.
Showing up at neighborhood associations is probably not as interesting as possessing enough money to turn to evil. Having never done either, I'm guessing.
84 - otc meds are super cheap at Costco. We figure we save enough on Claritin alone to justify the cost. (If you drive and your Costco has a gas station attached, that also tends to be substantially cheaper).
It's kind of funny - we are pretty much in the "shut up" class in terms of how we live our lives, but only because we don't have kids. It's not WHY we don't have kids, although for sure it influenced the decision.
So today, after having tried to raise the issue repeatedly for 2 years, I find that I should have been brought in 2 grades above what I was hired as, just as I'd suspected. And that's for someone with just one grad degree in my field where's I have two (and one of those from an Ivy which rates even higher here)! Apparently this is being rectified but not retroactively and I will have to go up one grade at a time in six months intervals!! I'm not even sure if the first jump up will begin now but may have to be six months from now!!! Back of the envelope calculations indicated this has cost me anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 over these two years!!!! Money in the fucking bank!!!!! Not to mention it being a major source for my souring on the job in the first place (especially after having discovered that people brought in at two grades above me had about half the education qualifications I do)!!!!!!
This place!!!!!!! This fucking place!!!!!!!
I hope you didn't steal the envelop from work. They might dock your pay for it.
Huh. I mean, I could be more politically involved locally (I am not partially because the ethnic politics are fraught. In my neighborhood you kind of have a political choice between being Dominican or being anti-Dominican. And I'm not Dominican and have some real issues with the local Dominican machine politics. OTOH, the non/anti-Dominican political organization comes off kinda racist sometimes. I get confused and stay out.)
But... I could be 'influential' by showing up the way anyone who has the time could. I'm not really sure how I'd use money, in the amounts that I have, to be influential. Like, I could donate the limit in local races, but I couldn't, e.g., blanket local races statewide, which is the sort of thing seriously rich people do.
111: Does the fact that you've managed to get them to admit that mean that things are changing in your favor?
115 would be the kind of helpful thing I should have said instead of 113.
111: !!!!!! I'd be furious. I am furious on your behalf.
Yes and no. It's complicated. In some ways things have actually gotten worse. The war of the managers continues and the one who is acting director of my section truly has little idea of what I really do or my workflows. I was sanctioned for not producing enough in the one thing I had told him I couldn't meet his unrealistic expectations and that I needed certain materials to do the job which he was responsible for ordering and was lackadaisical in doing so. Everything else I have turned around well ahead of deadline. I would suspect malice but I think it's just a combination of incompetence and being overwhelmed with too many responsibilities. This is the one who continues to order items of more than dubious provenance, overruling my cautions and suggestions in my own area of expertise.
I wonder how much influence costs, by state. Like, places like Montana and Wyoming are probably swamped by the thin layer of superrich, whereas Indiana and Kansas and Alabama, less so? Is Texas on par with Colorado?
116: I have a pathological case of look-on-the-bright-sideism. It's kind of strained of late.
Dubious Provence is my favorite part of France.
121 I need a boatload of that since I'm stuck here (in more ways than one of late) since the last thing didn't work out.
In my neighborhood you kind of have a political choice between being Dominican or being anti-Dominican
No Franciscans or Jesuits?
Franciscans. No Jesuits I know of.
Yes, excuse me, 67 to 52.
And yes, I think I shared your basic problem. Nailing down the irregular expenses is tricky but surprisingly helpful
With my just-purchased car, carrying on this principle, I'm setting aside a sum in a new savings account every month for repairs, maintenance, and eventual replacement, gleaned from online TCO estimates.
126. The post-1773 jesuits are but a dimly reflected shadow of their megalomaniacal former selves. Why bother.
Jesuit universities have done much better at college basketball post-1773.
Jesuit universities have done much better at college basketball post-1773
I figured that a break for a few decades would give them time to focus on the fundamentals.
119 I don't think 'influence' is really the right frame for this kind of calculation. What you want is for people who already agree with you to get elected. What's it cost for someone to get elected? Depends on the office, but even more on the stuff that's more or less outside your direct control.
To go into the weds, talking with people in Billings about our recent special election loss there, I heard a lot about organization in churches, and a lack of community building on the liberal/left side. I still think the fact that the economy is very heavily dependent on fossil fuels also plays a significant role, even if it's just an unconscious aversion to Change.
Our upcoming US Senate race will cost tens of millions of dollars. The forces of darkness haven't coalesced behind a particular human, but they will. And that person will already be evil, you can bet on that.
All that said, I had a ringside seat to some lobbying efforts in my prior life; if you have a good narrative, a contribution at the limit may well be enough to get you a chance to tell a member of Congress your story. And if your story is 'put a comma in the statute here, and it will create real value for your constituents (and, not that it matter, maybe me too, a little), well, that's a pretty good story.
Let's hope they stick to humans. I'm starting to think there's more that right out "They Live" than the '...and I'm all out of bubble gum" quote.
I feel like I should make a budget, but for months I've been shoveling just about everything I have extra towards student loans and more or less breaking even month to month, once you factor in the months where there's three paychecks. I keep a buffer that I try not to go below and time purchases based on what I expect for each month, when the next three paycheck month is, etc. so it's working, just with some regular uncertainty that I've calculated things right. Aside from the buffer of savings, I can cut back the loans to the standard payment, and combined that's enough to cover me for most non-catastrophic but unexpected costs.
I need to spend less on lunch, though. I make my own lunch more often than I used to, but it still costs a lot to get just a mediocre sandwich around here.
I have a recipe for a tuna salad sandwich that was published in a cookbook which you can maybe find a copy of if you know people who worked for the state of Ohio during the mid-90s.
I forget the details, but I think it involved mayonnaise.
134: That, mutatis mutandis, is how I've always 'budgeted', and if it's working for you (that is, you are successfully paying down your student loans faster than necessary) I wouldn't worry about getting more precise. I think literal budgeting gets really necessary only when you can't figure out why you're spending all your money/going further into debt.
101- Do you get Mint to work with your accounts? I used it for a while but then various financial institutions started blocking it, I don't know if it's due to standard security reasons (e.g. 2FA which Mint doesn't seem to handle when querying an account with it activated) or if those financial institutions didn't want a third party impinging on their potential portfolio management business.
I'll be back to comfortable enough to not think much about money once the place that I've been renting out sells. If even the agent's most pessimistic estimates are right, it will be a nice little windfall.
But fuck, is getting property ready to sell expensive, especially when I'm no longer getting any rental income.
106:
"Well, right. If I'd made partner at either of the big firms I've worked at, my income would have gone down for at least 3-5 years due to requirement i pay my overhead, carry own insurance and make mandatory retirement contributions, I would have spent 10+ years as a highly vulnerable income partner, would be first in line for the axe in any downturn and would only be eligible for discretionary elevation to income partner with a very substantial book of business I somehow managed to concoct via bloody hand-to-hand combat with more senior and-or powerful partners grabbing credit for every bit of business I manage to bring in the door."
As they say, fixed that for you.
Barry - sending huge sympathy, totally sucks. V sorry you can't see your sweetie, too.
Maybe you're just not as good at evil?
If both of you go try to steal candy from babies for a half hour and report back on how much was stolen, we can establish a baseline metric.
Assuming we can adjust for how much tougher New York babies are when compared to California ones.
I think you wanted 'equity partner' for your second usage of 'income partner' there. I don't think Schmebevoise had non-equity partners at the time I would have been up for partner, but your point is generally fair -- I just meant that there was a point on which I was theoretically on a career track where next-level wealthy wouldn't have been shocking. Still pretty low odds, though.
We use Mint. The "rollover" setting works pretty well for irregular items like healthcare, kid activities, etc. I don't know if it actually influences our spending, but we're pretty clear on where our money is going.
Yes, meant equity second time used income. And if no income partners, add mandatory capital buy-in to drags on income post elevation, tho are there any firms left among the top ranks without income partnership as purgatorial gateway to equity?
...but we're pretty clear on where our money is going.
I really like that we aren't so clear on that. I think the flexibility of the combined alcohol/lunch/uninsured medical expenses category is essential to my way of life.
I'm about to take a dive into unemployment. I guess its voluntary, so I can't complain about it. And I am top quintile enough that our savings can sustain us for a pretty good stretch.
But it still means pinching pennies, which I'm not looking forward to. The annual lobster dinner which we put on for my wife's family is going to be burgers this year.
Ezra Brooks is very good and much, much cheaper than something like Makers Mark.
Lobster burgers doesn't sound like a good idea, but I guess if you use enough filler you can save money.
Use enough cheap bourbon that you can serve imitation "crab" as lobster.
I'm thinking you could make a mean lobster roll out of fish sticks.
You can make a lobster roll but it's tough to teach it other tricks.
139: No problems for us. We don't have any quirky accounts and use Mint on the same device as we log in to accounts. We have 2FA on some but not most.
155: Mean ones anyway.
"Great hobby, loser--'I train lobsters.' That'll go over well at the family reunion. I'm sure your white shoe firm law partner brother-in-law will be very impressed. And maybe it's just Snell's law, but that swimsuit makes your ass look fat from down here, And jeez, maybe trim your nose hairs from time to time. Like, do you even have friends? Or a 401K?"
It's hard to gain respect when working with seafood.
My comment was more about being, by most measures, financially fine, and still feeling anxious and pinched. I just keep comparing myself to folks around me and thinking, "Huh, I wonder how they afford that."
IME, it's one of the things:
- They can't afford it. They're living on debt and leveraged up to their eyeballs (75% of the time this is why)
- They don't have any student loan debt, so they have a lot more discretionary income to play around with (15%)
- They have a family member who is providing them with quiet support (car insurance, cell phone plan, vacations, expensive electronic toys) (10%)
Percentages may vary depending on the peer group you're referencing. But IME there is literally no amount of income that prevents some people from spending more than they have. I'm talking people who easily earn $300K a year and are in major debt for dumb, predictable reasons.
Whatever. Organic Percocet is worth the extra money.
159: All three of those things apply to me.
Some people, like Batman, also have inherited wealth.
156- I went through and fixed it- some sites updated capabilities for this, where there's a separate code you generate for aggregators like this to use.
159
I ydnew's thoughts about my fellow grad students. I know plenty of people who jaunt off somewhere fun and expensive for breaks, people who take ubers to concerts and trendy hipster bars every weekend, people who buy $28/lb coffee beans, + drink expensive coffee & booze on the regular.
I think lots of people have some sort of consumer debt, or at least save absolutely nothing. (I'm surprised at the number of people who are dead broke by summer, given that the current stipend is pretty reasonable for 12 months of frugal-ish living). I also think a lot are from wealthy families and/or have spouses with real jobs. Aside from wealthy people, one thing that's surprised me are the number of middle class people who get some level of regular support from parents, even if it's not an obvious "they pay my rent" level of support. Like, probably 50% of the people I know are on their parents' cell phone plans, or a ton of people have their parents' accountant do their taxes, pay for plane tickets, or chip in for medical expenses. I don't know if this is unique to grad students, or is representative of millennials more generally. I certainly benefit from the psychological safety net of being related to MC/UMC people who could help me out if I really needed it, but my mother would not be down with regularly contributing to my expenses.
On the flip side, my husband's family is much more willing to fund his lifestyle, which I associate more with Italian culture than American millennial culture.* I have to say I've certainly benefited from the fact they live half the year in a hip part of LA and the other half in a villa in an expensive medieval vacation town in northern Italy, which means "staying with the in-laws" is equivalent to a fairly posh vacation (well, setting aside the "interacting with in-laws" aspect of it).
*His MIL really wants us to move in with them so she can raise our kids, which seems way more Italian than UMC American.
But IME there is literally no amount of income that prevents some people from spending more than they have. I'm talking people who easily earn $300K a year and are in major debt for dumb, predictable reasons.
The Nic Cage Syndrome.
159,164: I think that many people in the US inherit the sense that "No, that costs too much" is a shameful thing to say or think, coupled with unreflected consumer tastes inherited from family/friends during formative years.
I guess my sense of this comes from my undergrad/grad years, when I was on the having less side of most of my social circles, and it didn't bother me much. But I'd see how the other people who grew up here had a tough time with being seen to scrimp-- actually cutting corners was for most of them OK, rationalized as temporary, but being seen to have less or to say (when choosing what to do for fun) what your rough budget was, those weren't popular.
159,164: I think that many people in the US inherit the sense that "No, that costs too much" is a shameful thing to say or think, coupled with unreflected consumer tastes inherited from family/friends during formative years.
I guess my sense of this comes from my undergrad/grad years, when I was on the having less side of most of my social circles, and it didn't bother me much. But I'd see how the other people who grew up here had a tough time with being seen to scrimp-- actually cutting corners was for most of them OK, rationalized as temporary, but being seen to have less or to say (when choosing what to do for fun) what your rough budget was, those weren't popular.
Nic Cage's appetites are so excellent that he does everything twice.
I liked The Weather Man a fair amount. Has anyone seen Cure for Wellness?
I really feel like being raised by working class left wing Norwegians really helped me out. Being ridiculously frugal was definitely a moral virtue and sort of a point of pride/reverse snobbery--look at what I didn't spend money on that fools other Americans would have. It was also fairly disconnected from actual class experience, beyond an abstract political sense. Also, because we *were* actually wealthier than lots of people around us, the fact that my father got our TV from a dumpster and my grandfather used string to hold his pants on was more personal eccentricity than visual signs of poverty.
166
Yeah, I feel like, "we can't afford it" or "do you think money grows on trees?" were my parents favorite sayings when we were little. It shocks me how many people feel anxious about admitting they can't afford something, especially to their children.
Grad school is also weird because income tends to go down after the 5 years of funding, so when you're hitting your 30s, you're actually making less than you were in your late 20s, which is opposite most people. My biggest problem with grad school is the number of people who succumb to lifestyle creep without actually having the attendant rising income. My best friend started dating a spendthrift and snobby hipster, and suddenly the cheap things we used to do are no longer good enough. It makes me kind of upset and I sort of want to shout, "you don't earn enough to be too good for Miller High Life!" but then I figure not being an asshole is more important.
"No, that costs too much" is a shameful thing to say or think, coupled with unreflected consumer tastes
A problem easily fixed by reading any Unfogged shoe-shopping thread.
I had a few grad school friends who took out loans to support (retrospectively rational) comforts while living on low income. In the field we were in, that was actually sensible-- salaries on completion supported loan payoffs, no prob.
How much to spend and what on are socially complicated, as you say. I'm just noting that normal middle-class culture here is not that great about it. There are much worse cultural possibilities also-- many people have parents deeply invested in an income-maximizing life for their kids for (I guess) bragging rights, which seems fraught to say the least. I don't mean to imply that american mores are to always want more-- saying that something clearly expensive costs too much is fine in US culture, obvs.
170: Mine too, but my kids are touchy about the threat of deprivation and I try to balance it. Plus balancing with an ex who buys all sorts of things for the younger two. It's all kind of complicated and I feel crummy no matter what. I've also gotten money from my parents in the last year for the first time in my adult life, though I've now done the mature thing and dipped into my retirement savings to make sure we have the cushion I want to get through the next while. I don't know where that puts me on any of this. Having children with chronic health conditions is terrifying even though they're covered by Medicaid for now. I'm not saving for their college years. I just don't know. But I feel incredibly financially fortunate too.
When I was in grad school, we prided ourselves on slumming it. Malt liquor was occasionally involved.
IPMHBBISIT, in graduate school I shared an office with the offspring of a guy with over one billion dollars. And, at a different time, with a woman who was losing her hair because she was vegan, but not very good at it.
Quick question! I have to write an acknowledgements section for this article I wrote, and is it a major faux pas to thank the editor for his revisions? I feel like more than anyone he very much helped me write a better, more technically precise paper, but is that sort of weird?
You're not going to mention his qss, right?
OT: Can you send fries back if they aren't cooked enough? I went to a fancy place and the fries were undercooked.
There are few foods with as big a deliciousness gap between under- and over-done as fries so yes.
s/over/correctly or whatever/g
Maybe chicken.
I'm supposed to be flying to Cuba next month for a conference. What are the chances that Trump's planned "Cuba speech" will screw everything up?
OT: Apparently New Hampshire is in need of spending on transportation infrastructure.
I honestly can't tell if that letter is a joke or not. I suspect not, but only because I have stereotypes about Alabama that I like to see reinforced.
Our ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith a career FSO and by all accounts a superb public servant, has resigned.
This is next level frightening. It may be all the other bullshit I'm going through at the moment but I find myself weeping over this news.
You do have some food in the house now, right?
192. Scares the bejayzuz out of me and I'm neither American nor in Western Asia. Stay safe.
And you're flying to the states in a week or so, right?
Speaking from experience: remember to bring in any laundry you have out drying on the porch.
193 I have some cheese. And rusks. Also Honey Nut Cheerios. And a couple of bottles of bourbon and a couple of bottles of scotch. Also moving to another apartment this week.
196 Yup, hope to see you at a meet-up.
I've seen reports that her 3-year customary stint was up but I can't imagine her resigning without a replacement lined up given that we are in the midst of a serious crisis here. And this administration has been notoriously sluggish in nominating ambassadors as with all other posts (no undersecretary for Middle East is unconscionable.)
Seems Ambassador Smith can tweet with the best of them.
Meanwhile, the PRC tightens the noose a little more.
Time for meeting where Tillerson's "staff*" goes around the room saying how great he is doing.
*But it's like two people, right? Maybe get all the remaining ambassadors to do that.
||So the real estate agent for my new apartment just texts me and tells me that not only is the apartment ready but I must come to his office in the next 3 hours to sign the contract but I've yet to inspect the apartment (and it's night now) and I'm well into a large tumbler of scotch. No can do. |>
and it's night now
It's morning in America. Kind of.
Just tell him you'll tweet his name at Trump.
||
So that dumb college student who got arrested in North Korea has just been released due to poor health. Apparently he's been in a coma for most of the time. Here's what we said at the time, in a past only dimly recognizable.
|>
206 404. Is that the dumbass who tore down that poster? Good, I'm glad he's released (and very sorry to hear about his health in the interim, thoug not surprised).
A past not just hard to recognize, but in fact impossible to find.
I was raised on DOS's 8.3 format so sometimes I forget the l. (Link fixed, and tested.)
Add a final 'l', and the link works.
On topic! Let me give a drunken observation about the nature of income. Inspired by the fact that I suddenly received a ~$500 royalty deposit for a book where I was never really expecting any income, and went out to drink 10% of it. As many know from hints here and details at the other place, this year our budget and spending were completely scrambled. Plus side: lived in a place with super low expenses; said place starts public school younger so our first year without many thousands or tens of daycare costs; AirBnB rental way more than we thought would happen; other random income from consulting, above book, etc. Negative side: Way more travel expenses, maintenance and prep associated with AirBnB, administrative stuff related to living abroad, loss of one earner's income for a year.
So the drunken observation is that irregular income just feels different when you're used to regular income and expenses. Overall the rental plus lack of child care roughly matched loss of earner and increased travel. But the rental specifically, because it was so unpredictable, felt like magic money falling from the sky even if in some months it was about the same we've made in past years from regular paycheck of a second earner. This made it much more tempting to spend, since we certainly could get by without a high demand weekend rental at $1k popping up, but long term should probably treat it as any other income in terms of budgeting. I wonder if that's a widespread psychological thing, and what it means for people with irregular schedules or the whole "gig economy" concept.