There’s been much ballyhoo lately about cost of living and affordability in media lately (deservedly so, imo) but I’m curious how hard it is for those of us who are a little more capable than normies (we like to think).
Feel free to be somewhat vague. Not asking anyone to doxx themselves. I’ll start.
In my mid-thirties. Married, two kids. Combined income is just under 100k. We live in a low cost of living area which has helped us a lot. We were able to buy a house in ‘21 with a 15 year mortgage and it feels like we got on the last lifeboat off the Titanic. We’ve been able to build about a 200k net worth, about half of which is home equity.
Day to day expenses are getting tougher, however. We’ve never had a car payment but our older kid has started school and that has put a strain on us since he goes to a private Christian school. I’ve worked in education and I consider sending a kid to public school to be akin to child abuse.
It feels harder and harder to save and invest. Just making ends meet with two kids in this red state feels like a Herculean task. Wondering if anyone else feels the same way.
Similar experience with midweek daytime Costco.
I really don't have an explanation other than too many nons & government WFH assholes.
I worked from home or in the field before all of the Covid, just nature of the job. Essentially a lot of my time was flexible because I often needed to do something outside the 8-5.
Everything is so much more busy now during the day. Used to if I wasn't in a business-heavy area I could eat lunch by myself, shop for groceries with the old ladies, etc.
I have an issue with WFH in general. But definitely moreso government WFH workers in particular who remain at home 5 years later because politicians & managers were too cowardly to declare "two weeks to flatten the curve" over after two fucking weeks.
Given how useless & pozzed your average civil servant is to begin with, these parasites deserve to hang even more given the fact they now get to do their Jewish daycare jobs without showering or putting on pants.
I'm not one of those "if it was important you couldn't do it from home" types, but what I will say and speculate is that the expectations have gotten pulled so far down that a high quality employee can do their work in maybe a third of the work week. I guess that's what happen when you fill buildings with DEIs and H1Bs that can't tell their mouth from their ass much less produce anything. Downside? If everyone did a good job we'd need a ton less employees total. Corporate work life doesn't reward doing anything above the median of work though really unless you have dark skin or a magic triangle. Even then, the possession of such traits is your main value, not actually doing work.
I'm sure the government is even better at this incompetence than the business world. So they just sit at home click a few times each week and call it work.
I think there's big schism in WFH between lazy, pozzed bureaucrats and tech sector private corp employees and contract workers.
I think a lot of the private sector WFH is BS as well. But it bothers me a lot less since taxpayers generally aren't subsidizing it (big IF, I suppose), can choose not to buy from a company with a bad product or customer service, private corps with bad work culture can theoretically go under, etc.
But there's really no way to avoid being complicit and sucked dry from the WFH public sector types.
It's also infuriating that all these pozzed COVIDidian assholes somehow ended up with better working conditions and more perks as a fallout of their fealty to the COVID kabuki theater restrictrion regime.
Same.. everything is packed. Even during the day. I work for myself so I. Used to taking off to go to the gym or hike before the shutdown shit and it became common. Either everyone is unemployed or everyone is working from home. And based on what I see, they sure as shit aren't working or home. I'm 90% convinced most people took out seconds on their home and are living off debt.