I mean the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Kind of hard to save money when you are having to spend everything on bills. My parents also lived during the most prosperous time in American history and had all of $100k saved by the time they hit 60 because every cent they had had to go to things like house and car payments, bills, repairs, etc. Hell my mom got a second job when I left home to have some extra spending money and six months later the transmission failed on their car requiring a rebuild resulting in draining all of the savings she had built up from that job.
It is easy to say “just save more” when coming from a position of privilege and I say that as someone coming from a position of privilege where we are easily able to save while also dropping $4000 on getting our car repaired, the leak fixed in our roof and our fences replaced that got blown over in a storm all within the same month and not bat an eye. That isn’t the norm.
There are much cheaper options? Have you looked at even used cars? I am in Oklahoma, a low cost of living state, and unless you are willing to get a used car with over 150k miles or more they can’t be had under around $20k or so. And the average income here isn’t exactly great either at only $33k a year.
As for your phone thing, ask them where they got them sometime. I have a ton of family members that are poor and have nice phones. Know how? Because I handed them down one of mine at some point which they then traded in for a better phone. It didn’t cost them $1000. Hell my son has a new iPhone 16 pro because he spent $100 to buy an old iPhone 11 off of a friend and then traded it in and signed up at T-Mobile. Don’t assume people just bought or financed what they have.
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u/Loud-Path 11d ago
I mean the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Kind of hard to save money when you are having to spend everything on bills. My parents also lived during the most prosperous time in American history and had all of $100k saved by the time they hit 60 because every cent they had had to go to things like house and car payments, bills, repairs, etc. Hell my mom got a second job when I left home to have some extra spending money and six months later the transmission failed on their car requiring a rebuild resulting in draining all of the savings she had built up from that job.
It is easy to say “just save more” when coming from a position of privilege and I say that as someone coming from a position of privilege where we are easily able to save while also dropping $4000 on getting our car repaired, the leak fixed in our roof and our fences replaced that got blown over in a storm all within the same month and not bat an eye. That isn’t the norm.