Interesting Blog About Income in the USA

[FunInTheSunParticipant 8288]

Goodbye Middle Class: 51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year

According to the Social Security Administration, Half of working Americans make less than $30,000 a year.

On the flip side, there are about 15 million millionaires in the USA:

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/13/countries-with-the-most-millionaires.html

__________________________________________________________________________________

I’ve often wondered how people get by if they can barely pay their bills. I’ve been living completely alone for about 2 years and there were times when I just paid the rent and let the rest of the bills pile up. When I got more hours at work, I paid the unpaid bills. I know that some people use government welfare programs for food & housing, but what about others? Maybe they steal stuff or beg for money. I used to live with roommates for many years. We shared a house. I think that’s the way people will live in the future: they will delay marriage and share a house or apartment with friends until they make enough money to move out. Some will have 2 jobs in order to get by.

I’d like to get to a point in my life where I have investments set up to give me a nice pension—enough for the bills and fun activities. I don’t want to spend my whole life working just to survive.

"I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win-and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was ‘No.’" (Atlas Shrugged)

[LeavesParticipant 55]

A problem is – you can set up anything you want no matter how much money or whatever you have, everything is able to go down the river when you at least expect it.
In Germany for example it’s IMPOSSIBLE for most of the retired people to live without Help from the gouverment.

An example – my parents are lucky, my father is 75 my mother 67. Both of them are retired but both of them are still working, my mother 2 days a week my father every day a week, so 7 times a day 6 hours a day with 75.
They do not have to and can life with around 800 euros together after paying EVERYTHING – because they go to work they got more then twice as much they would have with just living in retirement.

There are so much people i also know who are retired with 68 after working for more then 50 years and even then, they have LESS then 600-700EUR so the gouverment has to push money up – they recieve the money for the apartment + 399EUR – and have to pay the electric bill phone bill and/or internet – so let’s say it’s 350EUR a person at the end – where do you go with 350EUR ? You can stay alive – but thats it.

There is no way to spend money on fun activities or go for dinner more then one time a month if it won’t exceed let’s say 50EURs – how f~~~ed up is this? You worked your whole life, paid all taxes and made aprox 1million Euro in a normal life and retire (cause of medical treatment) to life 10, 20 or even more years being poor?
Hell the system is so great and the birthrate in Germany is the lowest in the world. Just 1.5 Children per couple – Germans are dying and the Retirementmoney for the gouverment get’s higher and higher so you have to pay up and elderly people still can’t life because of the unbelieveable low “income” wth…

[BeerParticipant 11832]

Leaves wrote:

Retirementmoney for the gouverment get’s higher and higher so you have to pay up and elderly people still can’t life because of the unbelieveable low “income” wth…

The government being involved in retirement savings is the worst f~~~ing deal ever for people that are responsible with their money. We have social security here in the states, which is effectively a 13% tax on your income. If you made an average income of 50k for 40 years, that would be 6500 a year. If you invested 6500 a year for 40 years and earned an average of 7% on it you’d retire with 1.5 million. Instead social security will pay you like 18k a year lol. You could pull 18k a year out of that money for 80 years if it sat in a 0% interest account and not run out…yet somehow social security is projected to go broke in like 20 years. 1.5m earning you 3% interest you could make 45k a year and not even touch the principal.

FunInTheSun wrote:

On the flip side, there are about 15 million millionaires in the USA:

Most millionaires though are 60ish year old people that saved consistently for retirement and let compounding do the work for them. Anyone making over 50k a year could retire a millionaire if that was a priority for them…see above calc…bank 6500 a year for 40 years average 7% return a year and your well over a million. 6500 a year would probably amount to about 5k pretax + employer match. 5k pretax would probably amount to about 3500 post tax, which would be about 290 bucks a month you’d miss in your paychecks. I see plenty of people my age blowing this much on cell phones and coffee and complaining its impossible to save for retirement.

[FunInTheSunParticipant 8288]

Beer wrote:

cell phones and coffee

Ha ha. A little bit of sacrifice can go a long way in the future.

"I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win-and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was ‘No.’" (Atlas Shrugged)

[Author]

Posts