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.
Poland is socially conservative but not financially conservative--they were under the control of communists for 60 years and 3 whole generations grew up without ever knowing freedom. The Poles in general are economically illiterate and don't understand the connection between an overbearing government and sluggish labour markets--they benefited enormously from their high level of education relative to their economy and from a culture of hard work so after the fall of communism, despite the government continuing to over-regulate everything, they managed to usher in an age of massive growth due to their high-trust society, work ethic and tendency to obsessively chase success.
That can only take them so far and Poland has since entered a period of diminishing returns where their positive cultural traits can no longer push growth faster than the EU and socialist policies can retard it. Any further success from this point will need to be purchased through de-regulation and potentially exiting the EU.