I made $100k in 2014. If I don’t make $133k in 2024, I’m being paid less than before for the same work, plus 10 years of additional experience.
It’s pretty crazy. Never thought I would make over 100k in my life. Now that I have, 100k seems like the minimum to get by if you have kids. And this isn’t in a HCOL area either.
Bro same!
I’m making 5 times as much as I did when I was out of college. And I’m still nowhere near what my parents had.
Which either implies I was living in extreme poverty back then, or this is a hellhole.
My anecdote: I make about the same as my dad did at this age and I have about the same QoL and a nicer, newer home. Our single experiences don’t add up to much.
Theirs is backed by easily reviewable wage vs cost data.
If you have the same income as your dad, you’re at a loss at every transaction, comparatively. There’s no trick to the price of gas or a stick of gum. Such things have straight gone up since our parents were young
A paycheck anywhere doesn’t go as far as one of 40 years ago. This is not my opinion
Right. My point is anecdotes are just that.
…there’s anecdotes and then there’s anecdotes.
Some are confirmed by data, and some are fantasy.
The suggestion that individual variance of experience could even remotely cover the perception that wages aren’t as effective as past decades is silly.
Glad you get it.
That’s where you start to question whether it’s lifestyle creep or it’s really just that hard to get by and wonder how you used to do it on 1/2 or 1/3 of that income.
Then you realize your local bar still has beer for 3.25 a bottle just like the last 20 years and you realize inflation is a lie and it’s just corporate greed.
I paid $6.00 for a small coffee and a donut recently.
$81,000 isn’t a lot of money
I bought lunch for my team of five and it came to $75 with tip.
Fuck me. This was like basic sandwiches, chips, and a soda.
Next time, I’ll just bring them over to my house and make steaks for everybody for the same price.
One thing people don’t realize is how cheap luxuries used to be.
When the average salary was about $5,000, you could get a top of the line Cadillac or a Jaguar for $6,000.
Today the average is about $60,000 and supercars are in the million dollar range.
School kids used to be able to buy courtside seats for a game, or see a Broadway show.
Heck, a mocvie and a pizza out used to be a cheap date, now it can run a couple $100
The equivalent of 81k today is 62k in 2016.
If you graduated in 2016 and entered the workforce 62k would’ve been starvation wages in a lot of cities, but could sit you ok most other places.
In 1960 the minimum wage was $1.00 an hour in the US. The price of the average US home was $11,000.00.
Today it takes two college grads to achieve what a high school drop out could do 70 years ago. Progress!
Makes sense. 100k is the mark where you stop drowning and start treading water
81k? Sounds like they want to be modern middle class
yup. thats the lowest I can go and even hope of being in the black each month if absolutely nothing happens including eventual maintenance costs.
Anybody have a non-paywalled version?
I believe that. What I don’t believe is how people see that and remain optimistic.
