Re: A living wage

Posted by 2002sliverado on November 17, 2016 at 08:43:42 from (216.16.75.34):

In Reply to: A living wage posted by John in La on November 17, 2016 at 06:29:28:

Wages for the middle class have been typically stagnant in this country, while the cost of everything has gone up. I am blown away by the homes people buy and live in, along with the vehicles the have parked in two of the stalls of their attached garage, with some toys parked in the third stall. We are a people obsessed with having "stuff." I will admit I have my own "stuff," and it perhaps is too much. I look at people my age (50) and those down to the age of 25 or 30. I have never gotten caught up in the hype of driving a new car or having a big, fancy home. I like seeing others pay for this stuff, and then I like to find those items these people trade in for newer stuff. My home, it is a fixer upper we have been working on for 7 years. I still have more to do, but it is at least sound and solid. My vehicles are all used. I just bought my "new to me" car last year. It was 12 years old with 32,000 miles on the odometer. It is in really great shape and I am happy with it. My last car was a 7 year old car with just under 25,000 miles. My truck was 10 years old, well cared for like every other vehicle I have bought, and it only had 36,000 miles. In every case, I managed to buy my vehicle for about a third of what it sold for new. Realtors and bankers love home buyers. They ask for their gross income and come up with a "figure" of what they can afford to pay a month on a home. My first home, my monthly installments were 1/4 of what I was told I could afford. The current home was 1/3. I have also carefully put money aside for retirement from the very first job I had starting in 1989. I have "in-laws" who are about my age who overbought on their home, lease a new SUV every 3 years, go to Cancun, Mexico twice a winter, monthly weekend long shopping trips with motels, etc..................they still manage to complain about not having any money, and I about went off the deep end when they complained about the price of gasoline when they were driving a Chevrolet Suburban AND a pickup truck as their only vehicles. I make a good living with my job, my wife has an okay paying job, and I have a farming operation on the side, too, which the combine is 20 years old with a 40 year old corn head, and the newest tractor is 22 years old. No GPS or autosteer, and I really cannot justify it if I wanted it. The road to retirement is a marathon that must begin day one of your working years. It is not a sprint in the last years of working. Taking care of one's self in our later years involves sacrifice, working hard, working smart, and planning. By the way, my "in-laws" are banking on their potential inheritance to finance their retirement. Good luck to them on that note. I suspect the lucky morons will hit some sort of financial windfall to bail their butts out of trouble at some point, but at least I feel a bit more hopeful and confident my planning will pay off. The houses like you show here are on payments, just like the new SUV you shared, and the other things these "keep up with the Jones" morons have bought in to.

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