Income a family of four need to live comfortably by state in the U.S.

[Capt W]

Dying with $60 million while still living in squalor is profoundly stupid.

There's no indication this person lived in squalor. Simple life, yes; squalor is a stretch.

Also no indication of this person's values or desires. It appears there was more to this man's life than collecting "stuff." How was his estate distributed? Relatives? Charity? Whatever the answer it's probably what he wanted. And that's just fine...and certainly not for others to judge through their lenses.

Peoples' perception of wealth and comfort can be quite distorted. Because my wife and I drive old cars and live in a simple home, many folks in our town think we're poor. People at our church have offered us trips to the food bank and try to waive fees for certain church trips and activities. Makes me laugh because our net worth is most assuredly more than most people we know. And as volunteers at our local food bank, it's amazing (not really) to see the huge number of new/luxury cars pulling in for a trunkload of free food. Misplaced priorities, anyone? That's OK. I'm sure they live "comfortably" with free food every week loaded into their BMW X5s and Lexus RXs.

With our kids now grown, my wife and I live in very simply. Our long-term goal is to give away most of what we have before going to our rewards. Our wealth in life comes from loving thy neighbor and helping as able.

 

[Pew]

And as volunteers at our local food bank, it's amazing (not really) to see the huge number of new/luxury cars pulling in for a trunkload of free food. Misplaced priorities, anyone? That's OK. I'm sure they live "comfortably" with free food every week loaded into their BMW X5s and Lexus RXs.

As a previous volunteer and recipient of food banks, this irks me a lot. A lot of poor folks who need this assistance are too busy or embarrassed to go to the food banks while the folks who can't take advantage of the system.

 

[Hillbilly Deluxe]

And as volunteers at our local food bank, it's amazing (not really) to see the huge number of new/luxury cars pulling in for a trunkload of free food. Misplaced priorities, anyone? That's OK. I'm sure they live "comfortably" with free food every week loaded into their BMW X5s and Lexus RXs.

If you watch the news stories when these events take place, it is clear that a majority of the takers at these events are all driving these high-end cars.

It's televised every Thanksgiving, Christmas and a few other times through the year.

Another thing I notice is when an entity gives away hams, money or some other food/assistance. These people will line up in the parking lot, street, sidewalk, whatever for HOURS, in any kind of weather for a $100 gift card or $80 Honeybaked Ham. They spend nearly 24 hours to get this. It's amazing they will stand in line, sit, whatever for hours just to get something free, but can't get to work....

 

[supton]

If you watch the news stories when these events take place, it is clear that a majority of the takers at these events are all driving these high-end cars.

It's televised every Thanksgiving, Christmas and a few other times through the year.

Another thing I notice is when an entity gives away hams, money or some other food/assistance. These people will line up in the parking lot, street, sidewalk, whatever for HOURS, in any kind of weather for a $100 gift card or $80 Honeybaked Ham. They spend nearly 24 hours to get this. It's amazing they will stand in line, sit, whatever for hours just to get something free, but can't get to work....

I won't stand in line to return a $20 item, can't imagine being in line for hours.

 

[SC Maintenance]

I won't stand in line to return a $20 item, can't imagine being in line for hours.

People can't do math.

Wife is a teacher. Post a meeting and say your childrens future 100% depends on you coming to this meeting, no parent shows. Meeting 2 - a presentation on something no one cares about but administration - and the worlds cheapest pizza for free - packed house.

 

[ArrestMeRedZ]

... No doubt crazy inflation can NOT be ignored even if the guy on TV says everything is sunshine and roses....

We haven't seen crazy inflation yet. I have a real bad feeling we are about to see it in the relatively near future. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[SC Maintenance]

We haven't seen crazy inflation yet. I have a real bad feeling we are about to see it in the relatively near future. I hope I'm wrong.

Anything in particular you are seeing - or just the ever rising money printing?

 

[ArrestMeRedZ]

Anything in particular you are seeing - or just the ever rising money printing?

Let me start with the fact I'm not an economics or finance major, nor do I have any formal training in the matter. Electronics engineering major. All my conclusions are based upon fear and superstition so take them with a grain of salt.

Money printing is a big factor. I'm seeing a lot of similarities with the late 70s when inflation took off. Just worse. Unabashed reckless government spending with nobody, and I mean nobody even thinking of controlling the deficit. Bringing it down is not even a topic among conservatives. U.S. Banks trying to control the price of precious metals with massive short selling and illegal price manipulation that is apparently condoned by the government. Other countries moving away from the dominance of the dollar is gaining steam with all the printing going on. If this happens on a large scale it is going to have a huge impact on our standard of living.

With the stock market overvalued I'm afraid to put all my marbles in it. With inflation, I'm afraid not to. Same goes for real estate.

 

[SC Maintenance]

Let me start with the fact I'm not an economics or finance major, nor do I have any formal training in the matter. Electronics engineering major. All my conclusions are based upon fear and superstition so take them with a grain of salt.

Money printing is a big factor. I'm seeing a lot of similarities with the late 70s when inflation took off. Just worse. Unabashed reckless government spending with nobody, and I mean nobody even thinking of controlling the deficit. Bringing it down is not even a topic among conservatives. U.S. Banks trying to control the price of precious metals with massive short selling and illegal price manipulation that is apparently condoned by the government. Other countries moving away from the dominance of the dollar is gaining steam with all the printing going on. If this happens on a large scale it is going to have a huge impact on our standard of living.

With the stock market overvalued I'm afraid to put all my marbles in it. With inflation, I'm afraid not to. Same goes for real estate.

The macro pattern is indeed following the early 1970's in many ways. Very different in many ways also - shrinking younger population for example.

 

[Hillbilly Deluxe]

Let me start with the fact I'm not an economics or finance major, nor do I have any formal training in the matter. Electronics engineering major. All my conclusions are based upon fear and superstition so take them with a grain of salt.

Money printing is a big factor. I'm seeing a lot of similarities with the late 70s when inflation took off. Just worse. Unabashed reckless government spending with nobody, and I mean nobody even thinking of controlling the deficit. Bringing it down is not even a topic among conservatives. U.S. Banks trying to control the price of precious metals with massive short selling and illegal price manipulation that is apparently condoned by the government. Other countries moving away from the dominance of the dollar is gaining steam with all the printing going on. If this happens on a large scale it is going to have a huge impact on our standard of living.

With the stock market overvalued I'm afraid to put all my marbles in it. With inflation, I'm afraid not to. Same goes for real estate.

Couple all of that with the fact that we've had a declining workforce for the last 10+ years, especially those that have the self-worth to better themselves and attempt to work a job that has them paying net Federal Income Taxes... The decline of society WILL come into play with the next serious recession and those that have chosen to ignore it will be made to care, along with the rest of us.

There will be a check-and-balance of real estate pricing. There always is. The main reason why prices are so high and rents are so high is the open border right now. With untold millions of people coming across the southern border the last few years, this is what is putting a strain on the supply and demand of housing. There's no sugar coating it, there's no hiding from it because one might be scared to talk about it.

Inflation and the causes of it and increased cost of living will start to have very noticeable impacts on most of society. It's a known fact that credit card balances are maxing out, people are missing payments, missing or late car payments, etc. We all know what happened in 2020, 2021 and 2022 with foolish car-buying. People trading in vehicles they were under-water on and agreeing to pay $10k+ more than MSRP and we all know those payments don't get priority today....

People have been over-paying for a lot of things the last 3 years. At some point, it will catch up. To us all.

 

[Dave Hess]

I notice here on BITOG there’s older folks that are very successful and financially secure that think much differently than some of the younger folks.

Sure, the older folks worked very hard and deserve what they accumulated in wealth…… but it was easier to do 30-40 years ago than today.

I tell my adult kids to work hard because “you already got your inheritance” and don’t expect anything else.
Big down payment for their house put them a decade ahead financially compared to their peers.

*** Edit ***
I also opened Roth IRAs when they turned 18 and gave them the max contribution to get the ball rolling. They were all working part-time jobs in high school cause they wanted to buy what the liked.

 

[goingplacesanddoingstuff]

There's no indication this person lived in squalor. Simple life, yes; squalor is a stretch.

Also no indication of this person's values or desires. It appears there was more to this man's life than collecting "stuff." How was his estate distributed? Relatives? Charity? Whatever the answer it's probably what he wanted. And that's just fine...and certainly not for others to judge through their lenses.

Peoples' perception of wealth and comfort can be quite distorted. Because my wife and I drive old cars and live in a simple home, many folks in our town think we're poor. People at our church have offered us trips to the food bank and try to waive fees for certain church trips and activities. Makes me laugh because our net worth is most assuredly more than most people we know. And as volunteers at our local food bank, it's amazing (not really) to see the huge number of new/luxury cars pulling in for a trunkload of free food. Misplaced priorities, anyone? That's OK. I'm sure they live "comfortably" with free food every week loaded into their BMW X5s and Lexus RXs.

With our kids now grown, my wife and I live in very simply. Our long-term goal is to give away most of what we have before going to our rewards. Our wealth in life comes from loving thy neighbor and helping as able.

The guy was penny pinching to an extreme with tens of millions in the bank, and passed away without benefitting from it. I suspect he was mentally ill.

I rarely use superlatives but there’s absolutely no universe where that disparity in lifestyle and wealth has any basis in rational, sound decision making. When that much wealth has been accumulated, what would be substantial upgrades in lifestyle for most middle class people are mere rounding errors or daily gains/losses. For all we know he could have prolonged his life by spending more.

 

[goingplacesanddoingstuff]

Can you help me out with how to get buildings/factories/plants built with the WFH concept? I haven't been able to make it work in the last 4 years. Same with hospitalization, maintenance, re-configuring process lines, removing/replacing piping, and more.


TIA

Reread my post.

 

[JeffKeryk]

Why I think it is? Simple, because the value of the tech is many multiples higher than the value of the underlying businesses that would notionally benefit.

Heck, the valuation of the tech businesses are encroaching on the entirety of the national GDP, and some of this tech isn’t even a tangible product, it’s essentially spying and tracking and knowing something about folks to sell ads (e.g., Google). Others have quality tangible products (e.g., MSFT OS/office, Apple computers and phones, Nvidia chipsets), but it’s dubious those items are the “value proposition”. Instead it’s the allure of “what if” forward demand and earnings for the next best thing. Which of course is part of valuation, but IMO it’s an excess valuation for what it is, when the underlying enabler is valued much less. Case in point, Apple sells lots of iPhones and whatnot. It has a reasonably high P/E of like 29. Yet the underlying businesses that enable the iPhone, companies like T, have P/E of 9. More egregiously, NVDA has a P/E of like 80 on the whim that more folks want their chips. Or TSLA has a P/E vastly different than other industrial automakers, on the premise of “tech” of which other traditional makers have caught up in many ways.

I love tech. I’m involved in high tech and R&D. It’s just crazy that it takes speculation based valuation when the underlying user and enabler is worth so much less.

The value of the tech is real in some companies and will fail in other companies. All the companies you named are software based companies. Take Tesla; they did well in the pandemic because they code their own firmware and were able to re-purpose available chips. No one else is even close to writing firmware, much less engineering a Dojo Supercomputer. Apple is strong because of their OS ease of use and ecosystem and most of all, reinventing itself. Google makes their money with the search engine, Youtube, cloud offerings and Google Maps.

Tesla's stock price has dropped almost 30% YTD and more going further back, yet are bigger from a market cap standpoint than the next 5 or 6 car companies combined. What's wrong with the the others?

The biggest topic in manufacturing today is Industry 5.0.

There are many ways to present and interpret data; your points are certainly well taken.
But the tech companies have changed the world. The market is a forward looking vehicle.
The advent of AI and Quantum Computing will cause the next big disruption.

Supported by the rise of data, AI promises machine learning and deep learning and natural language programming! AI algorithms are modeled after the decision-making processes of the human brain, that can ‘learn’ from available data and make increasingly more accurate classifications or predictions over time. I have mentioned this before. Imagine a "Doctor" who can diagnose a patient with more information than a thousand humans at incredible speed. It will know the most up to date data for that person based on locale, family history, etc.

Quantum Computing can solve problems that traditional binary computers could not begin to tackle. Superposition for the win!
Just my 2 cents.

 

[CKN]

I notice here on BITOG there’s older folks that are very successful and financially secure that think much differently than some of the younger folks.

Sure, the older folks worked very hard and deserve what they accumulated in wealth…… but it was easier to do 30-40 years ago than today.

I tell my adult kids to work hard because “you already got your inheritance” and don’t expect anything else.
Big down payment for their house put them a decade ahead financially compared to their peers.

*** Edit ***
I also opened Roth IRAs when they turned 18 and gave them the max contribution to get the ball rolling. They were all working part-time jobs in high school cause they wanted to buy what the liked.

As I said in an earlier post-for anybody to think that all a young person has to do to afford a house these days is to "get a second job" is nonsensical, naive, and stupid.

 

[JeffKeryk]

As I said in an earlier post-for anybody to think that all a young person has to do to afford a house these days is to "get a second job" is nonsensical, naive, and stupid.

Or an older person...

 

[SC Maintenance]

Or an older person...

Yep, good point. If you had a decent net worth and risk assets in 2019, your wealth has likely doubled in the last few years.

If you did not, your COL has doubled and that is about it.

Not directly age related.

 

[GON]

Yep, good point. If you had a decent net worth and risk assets in 2019, your wealth has likely doubled in the last few years.

If you did not, your COL has doubled and that is about it.

Not directly age related.

The only issue, if you had decent liquid assets and were a senior citizen or nearing, many experts would state one should have had their liquid assets in guaranteed funds, so the increases in the equity markets since 2019 should not have had a direct impact for seniors.

 

[CKN]

Or an older person...

The statement I made Jeff (2nd job)-was often repeated on here through some threads fairly recently. So-yes. I'm 67-consider myself pretty prevalent on most things-
And more importantly since I joined this forum "I have never drank the Kool-Aid".

 

[John105]

Another thought...a specific number for salary is useless without defining benefits. Weak/no retirement contributions, health care, vacation, etc. all negate what can appear to be a healthy number on paper. COL in a locale but also state tax also comes into play. Take-home is what matters.

I hear you and I:

1. Don’t know what my net pay is
2. Couldn’t tell you my gross pay exactly, just +/- $3 or 4k
3. Never seem to know if this Friday is a payday
4. Been at my job almost 14 years and the worst benefits to date

Why does my co have 50/40/30/20 year tenure left and right?

Something has to be right.

I get my healthcare since 2023 through my wife’s job, school district (thank goodness $0 deductible, 0% coinsurance, PPO, and cheap (less than $300/mo).

Thanks to my current employer, I’ve maxed out the 401k to the IRS limits 12 years in a row and continue to do so (and beyond last few years cuz of age). I guess they pay me enough. Even though I have to work in the office, I’ve had a garage space since 2019, so my precious 2006 and 2007 can remain dent free—there are vps who are waiting for a garage space. We have guys working who literally need a walker. So the only thing that makes me furious with my job? 5/7 on my team are remote workers. Only 2 of us go in.

My bro works for a Swiss insurance co. Ridiculous benefits. Ridiculous wfh. Ridiculous bonus. Ridiculous time off from day 1. Unlimited everything. Nobody is happy and they can’t retain anybody. My thoughts? So greedy.

One woman was fired last week. She had a 2nd remote work from home job with another insurance co. Imagine the gall.

My .02 ymmv