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General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: AdrianC on September 30, 2016, 07:28:48 AM

Title: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: AdrianC on September 30, 2016, 07:28:48 AM
Thought some of you might be interested in this BBC article:

Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37508968

People in their early 30s are half as wealthy as those now in their 40s were at the same age, a report finds.

Today's 30-something generation has missed out on house price increases and better pensions, according to research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Those born in the early 1980s have an average wealth of £27,000 each, against the £53,000 those born in the 1970s had by the same age, said the IFS.

They will also find it harder to amass wealth in the future, it added.



Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: rantk81 on September 30, 2016, 07:58:00 AM
I'm from '81, and this sounds about right, based on hearing about the situation a lot of my peers are in.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 08:40:44 AM
yeah its hard to amass wealth when you're an over consumer ...
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Bucksandreds on September 30, 2016, 08:56:33 AM
yeah its hard to amass wealth when you're an over consumer ...

Missing the point.  The 80's born kids are no more 'over consumers' than the 70's born ones.  The difference is lower income, less generous retirements and unaffordable housing. The baby boomers in their insatiable lust for more, destroyed the futures of the younger generations. Good riddance to the worst generation as they disappear. (I understand that kids of the 70's are not baby boomers, I am talking about the system that is still largely run by the boomers)
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: mlejw6 on September 30, 2016, 08:57:56 AM
It's hard to amass wealth when you miss the boom times of the 90s because you were too young, then start working after 9/11. Though if you were able to ride out the last recession, you could be just fine. I wasn't.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: franklin w. dixon on September 30, 2016, 09:14:50 AM
The methodology is flawed.  I used to write about wealth creation and modern companies/economies do not just measure hard assets as wealth. 

The value of information and human capital assets has increase significantly (knowledge, education, patents, process efficiency, access to data) and human capital (potential for wealth creation via wages or work).  If you measure wealth you need to also measure access to compute power, telecommunications, and information, all of which are orders of magnitude more accessible/ cheaper.  It is like if housing cost 5% what it used to for those asset classes.

Also, if one measures wealth, you should look at the wealth of all nations.  There may have been a leveling of wealth globally, so perhaps a Brit has less hard assets, but their country may have just been part of a global leveling of wealth throughout a globalized economy.  Wealth will find those who need/are willing to work for it most.  When barriers are removed, the increased wealth from global growth will likely be disproportionately focused on increasing the wealth of many Indian or Chinese families before it lands in the hands of a British family.  Billions of people need the tide to rise for the British and Americans to expect such high living standards to be sustainable.

Welcome to the new reality of our global economy.  That said, a MMM lifestyle is the perfect anecdote.  We use our access to free information assets to build a wealthy life (especially relative to the intangible wealth factors of happiness, sustainability and personal satisfaction).
Now throw in the value of my kidneys... assume I'll live to age 500... divide by the odds of getting space scurvy from a Martian... multiply by the discount rate... assume I can get away with a few muggings... I'm a millionaire!!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: franklin w. dixon on September 30, 2016, 09:18:29 AM
What if instead of "money" we measured wealth in virtuons, hypothetical particles that accumulate to morally upstanding choices such as following the rules, steering clear of flavorful foods, praying the rosary, and arguing in favor of the status quo on internet forums.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: deadlymonkey on September 30, 2016, 09:20:43 AM
The methodology is flawed.  I used to write about wealth creation and modern companies/economies do not just measure hard assets as wealth. 

The value of information and human capital assets has increase significantly (knowledge, education, patents, process efficiency, access to data) and human capital (potential for wealth creation via wages or work).  If you measure wealth you need to also measure access to compute power, telecommunications, and information, all of which are orders of magnitude more accessible/ cheaper.  It is like if housing cost 5% what it used to for those asset classes.

Also, if one measures wealth, you should look at the wealth of all nations.  There may have been a leveling of wealth globally, so perhaps a Brit has less hard assets, but their country may have just been part of a global leveling of wealth throughout a globalized economy.  Wealth will find those who need/are willing to work for it most.  When barriers are removed, the increased wealth from global growth will likely be disproportionately focused on increasing the wealth of many Indian or Chinese families before it lands in the hands of a British family.  Billions of people need the tide to rise for the British and Americans to expect such high living standards to be sustainable.

Welcome to the new reality of our global economy.  That said, a MMM lifestyle is the perfect anecdote.  We use our access to free information assets to build a wealthy life (especially relative to the intangible wealth factors of happiness, sustainability and personal satisfaction).
Now throw in the value of my kidneys... assume I'll live to age 500... divide by the odds of getting space scurvy from a Martian... multiply by the discount rate... assume I can get away with a few muggings... I'm a millionaire!!

Silly...you can't get space scurvy from a martian as long as you are practicing safe space sex.  It is the jovians with their acidic fluids that are the real danger.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 09:25:56 AM
yeah its hard to amass wealth when you're an over consumer ...

Missing the point.  The 80's born kids are no more 'over consumers' than the 70's born ones.  The difference is lower income, less generous retirements and unaffordable housing. The baby boomers in their insatiable lust for more, destroyed the futures of the younger generations. Good riddance to the worst generation as they disappear. (I understand that kids of the 70's are not baby boomers, I am talking about the system that is still largely run by the boomers)

Yeah so hard to amass wealth. I was born in the mid 80s. I have a mountain
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Bucksandreds on September 30, 2016, 09:29:17 AM
yeah its hard to amass wealth when you're an over consumer ...

Missing the point.  The 80's born kids are no more 'over consumers' than the 70's born ones.  The difference is lower income, less generous retirements and unaffordable housing. The baby boomers in their insatiable lust for more, destroyed the futures of the younger generations. Good riddance to the worst generation as they disappear. (I understand that kids of the 70's are not baby boomers, I am talking about the system that is still largely run by the boomers)

Yeah so hard to amass wealth. I was born in the mid 80s. I have a mountain

You are still totally missing the point. The point is only comparison between decades of birth not absolute difficulty.  You are arguing something that's not being discussed in this thread.  There are 30 year old millionaires born in the 70's and 80's.  The point is, all else being equal, the younger are poorer.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cathy on September 30, 2016, 09:29:29 AM
yeah its hard to amass wealth when you're an over consumer ...

Missing the point.  The 80's born kids are no more 'over consumers' than the 70's born ones.  The difference is lower income, less generous retirements and unaffordable housing. The baby boomers in their insatiable lust for more, destroyed the futures of the younger generations. Good riddance to the worst generation as they disappear. (I understand that kids of the 70's are not baby boomers, I am talking about the system that is still largely run by the boomers).
You are still totally missing the point. The point is only comparison between decades of birth not absolute difficulty.  You are arguing something that's not being discussed in this thread.  There are 30 year old millionaires born in the 70's and 80's.  The point is, all else being equal, the younger are poorer.

No, I actually think boarder42 correctly identified the point here. The problem with your argument is that you seek to ascribe importance to an insignificant difference between two figures that are each approximately zero. Both £27,000 and £53,000 are a laughably low net worth for people in their "early 30s". The difference between those two figures is negligible, considering that with a little bit of self-discipline, a person in the early 30s can be a millionaire. Your posts are the epitome of complainypants.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on September 30, 2016, 09:53:01 AM
What if instead of "money" we measured wealth in virtuons, hypothetical particles that accumulate to morally upstanding choices such as following the rules, steering clear of flavorful foods, praying the rosary, and arguing in favor of the status quo on internet forums.

Then I'm at negative infinity and proud of it! (And also reject the premise that any of those things are virtuous.)

The difference between those two figures is negligible, considering that with a little bit of self-discipline [and good enough luck not to be unemployed between 2008 and 2012 because of structural economic issues that had nothing to do with their work ethic or skills], a person in the early 30s can be a millionaire.

FTFY.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: clarkfan1979 on September 30, 2016, 09:57:17 AM
yeah its hard to amass wealth when you're an over consumer ...

Agreed.


I am a hard worker, college educated, not materialistic, and willing to take calculated risk. Many of my good friends have similar attitudes. Over the last 5 years of my life (32-37), I have noticed that many of my friends are accumulating large amounts of wealth. I am a little behind because I went to graduate school for 7 years full-time. However, I have exceeded my own expectations and very happy. Most of my good friends no longer live anywhere close to our hometown. They saw opportunities that existed beyond our home town, including myself.

For the people that absolutely refuse to move from my hometown, it can be a struggle. There are systematic hardships that exist. However, if you are willing to move for a higher paying job and take some calculated risk, it's pretty easy to accumulate wealth.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: BlueMR2 on September 30, 2016, 10:03:29 AM
yeah its hard to amass wealth when you're an over consumer ...

Missing the point.  The 80's born kids are no more 'over consumers' than the 70's born ones.  The difference is lower income, less generous retirements and unaffordable housing. The baby boomers in their insatiable lust for more, destroyed the futures of the younger generations. Good riddance to the worst generation as they disappear. (I understand that kids of the 70's are not baby boomers, I am talking about the system that is still largely run by the boomers)

I have to disagree.  The 80's kids DO have a lot higher consumption for their critical early years.  For the 80's generation, having expensive cable TV, Internet, and a smartphone with data plan is the standard that they've started with.  That's thousands of dollars MORE in base consumption than the '70s kids had at that point in their lives.  The bulk of life's necessities track well with inflation.  If anything, housing is *under* priced now.  Ditto for cars, they don't cost as much as they *should*.  It's all those expensive add-ons.  One exception, sort of, is College.  Prices are much higher there, BUT, a lot of that appears to be due to people going for degrees that wouldn't have in the past, and the default seems to be the pricy out of state place now (back in my day, the default was the small cheap local place, and they do still exist, they're just struggling for attendance).
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on September 30, 2016, 10:45:48 AM
yeah its hard to amass wealth when you're an over consumer ...

Missing the point.  The 80's born kids are no more 'over consumers' than the 70's born ones.  The difference is lower income, less generous retirements and unaffordable housing. The baby boomers in their insatiable lust for more, destroyed the futures of the younger generations. Good riddance to the worst generation as they disappear. (I understand that kids of the 70's are not baby boomers, I am talking about the system that is still largely run by the boomers)

I have to disagree.  The 80's kids DO have a lot higher consumption for their critical early years.  For the 80's generation, having expensive cable TV, Internet, and a smartphone with data plan is the standard that they've started with.  That's thousands of dollars MORE in base consumption than the '70s kids had at that point in their lives.  The bulk of life's necessities track well with inflation.  If anything, housing is *under* priced now.  Ditto for cars, they don't cost as much as they *should*.  It's all those expensive add-ons.  One exception, sort of, is College.  Prices are much higher there, BUT, a lot of that appears to be due to people going for degrees that wouldn't have in the past, and the default seems to be the pricy out of state place now (back in my day, the default was the small cheap local place, and they do still exist, they're just struggling for attendance).

There's a lot of data to back this up too: single-family homes are larger today than in the 1980s. The percentage of people who take overseas vacations has gone way up. The amount spent on restaurants is much higher today.

The bottom line is that real-median income of people in their 30s is slightly higher today compared to where it was in the 1980s.  The money is simply being spent and not saved.  Not surprisingl given the personal savings rate went from 9-10% in the 80s to around 4% today (and current 30-somethings saving at/around 0% of their income).
(https://macro.economicblogs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/household-income-by-age-bracket-median-real.gif)
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on September 30, 2016, 10:49:57 AM
considering that with a little bit of self-discipline, a person in the early 30s can be a millionaire.

You have to be fucking kidding me!   That's 10 yrs after college.  You'd have to be making an average of 100K per year with a savings rate of near 100% after tax.  This is assuming generous rates of return too. 

Also, no, people in their early 30's are no more consumers than people in their early 40's.  Savings rates by age group over time show this to be true.      Link below shows the 0-34 age group had lowest savings rate in 2000-2005, that's the group that's now in early 40's!    And you can see by the low savings rate 1990-1995 for 0-34 age group that those now in their 50's were no better than those now in their 30's. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-the-coming-of-age-ritual-of-spend-now-save-later/2014/11/13/5fd9314e-6b73-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html?utm_term=.ec8be44036cb
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Lis on September 30, 2016, 10:59:51 AM
This is the longest millennials suck/millennials have it harder argument I've seen that doesn't use the term millennials. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: franklin w. dixon on September 30, 2016, 11:02:07 AM
What if instead of "money" we measured wealth in virtuons, hypothetical particles that accumulate to morally upstanding choices such as following the rules, steering clear of flavorful foods, praying the rosary, and arguing in favor of the status quo on internet forums.
So you get joy and feel superior by are aggressively criticizing my post in the disguised form of an attempt at humor?

Your thinking is buried in the past.  People have actually paid millions of dollars for my advise on these topics and gone on to form companies with valuations and influence that are shaping the world.

When you have actual comments to post on the thread topic, please feel free.

On topic, my point is that you can't take such a limited statistic to say a group is less well off than their preceding generation.  I have analyzed this topic in depth when a management consultant and this study is very flawed.  You need to normalize for many, many factors, only one of which is the price and quality of goods that are measured in currency perhaps not being equal.

So you are saying a person owning a cell phone from the 80s at a cost of $1000 has more wealth than a person with an iPhone 6 bought on eBay for $25 that has computing power equal to a supercomputer of the 80s?  That is my point about measuring wealth.  A car, home, phone manufactured in 2016 has measurably higher value than the equivalent manufactured in the 80s.  Some items have gone backwards, but the vast majority are vastly superior.

This type of normalization makes wealth comparison studies highly flawed.  Most are funded by politicians with an agenda to pursue and the researchers have a point of view to publish that is pre-determined.  Also, you can't ignore that the economy is now globalized so a UK housing price is local, not global.  Perhaps this also applies to China (housing has skyrocketed) but if you don't study all people you are only describing a local phenomenon, so again a flawed study.

But my bad for expecting an intelligent dialog on the Internet.  I will stop posting to the thread on topic and leave it to those who want to complain that the world is not the way they want it, wealth wise.  It's all there for those who try., 30 something or not.  That is MMMs message.

One more example.  This whole forum, it's content, MMMs career as a blogger.  All would not even have been possible 20 years ago.  So an entire form of wealth creation would have been measurably less effective. He would have had to write a book or get a column on a paper, convinced someone to publish it, let the ideas spread slowly, visit people to lecture in person to build a community....

How can someone participating in the forum claim it is crazy to realize that is a substantive thing that effects us all, especially 30 something's.  I won't even get started on topics like public infrastructure investments as wealth that all members of a country 'inherits', and how that can grow or shrink generationally. It is one reason why Africa remains so poor.  Cell phones are impacting this in a big way, though as on the telecom dimension, poor countries are leap frogging the asset inheritance gap.
All this free "advise" and I didn't even have to pay millions of dollars!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: I'm a red panda on September 30, 2016, 11:06:29 AM
This is the longest millennials suck/millennials have it harder argument I've seen that doesn't use the term millennials.

Not everyone in their 30s is a millenial. Only about half of them.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 11:13:10 AM
considering that with a little bit of self-discipline, a person in the early 30s can be a millionaire.

You have to be fucking kidding me!   That's 10 yrs after college.  You'd have to be making an average of 100K per year with a savings rate of near 100% after tax.  This is assuming generous rates of return too. 

Also, no, people in their early 30's are no more consumers than people in their early 40's.  Savings rates by age group over time show this to be true.      Link below shows the 0-34 age group had lowest savings rate in 2000-2005, that's the group that's now in early 40's!    And you can see by the low savings rate 1990-1995 for 0-34 age group that those now in their 50's were no better than those now in their 30's. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-the-coming-of-age-ritual-of-spend-now-save-later/2014/11/13/5fd9314e-6b73-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html?utm_term=.ec8be44036cb

only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: StarBright on September 30, 2016, 11:14:43 AM
yeah its hard to amass wealth when you're an over consumer ...

Missing the point.  The 80's born kids are no more 'over consumers' than the 70's born ones.  The difference is lower income, less generous retirements and unaffordable housing. The baby boomers in their insatiable lust for more, destroyed the futures of the younger generations. Good riddance to the worst generation as they disappear. (I understand that kids of the 70's are not baby boomers, I am talking about the system that is still largely run by the boomers)

Yeah so hard to amass wealth. I was born in the mid 80s. I have a mountain

Obviously the folks on this board are going to be different than the status quo. Another 81er here and I am doing better than almost anyone I know - but it certainly isn't easy. I think amassing wealth IS hard, takes a lot of work and self-sacrifice, and I don't find it particularly pleasant.

I've said this in another thread a while back, but even though I am saving money, I'm working twice as hard as my folks did (especially if you factor in that I am the breadwinner and am doing a large share of the housekeeping - but childcare is outsourced) and I'm making less money doing so than my father made at a 40 hour a week job the same age. Doesn't mean I'm not growing my nest egg, just means I have to work a little harder to do so.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: franklin w. dixon on September 30, 2016, 11:15:25 AM
I love the bizarre technofetishism that's like "Ah! But they invented the iPhone! How about them apples!" because it's so trivially incoherent. Like every single time the argument is trotted out line item one is like A Computer Has One Quadrillion Times The Processing Power Of A Scribe! Take THAT, ancient Egypt! with no reference to any connection between Limitless Gigahertz and people's ability to "be alive" or "have a house" or "go to the doctor" or "attend school."

So there's this bizarre backwards reasoning which hypothesizes that the iPhone didn't exist in 1980... therefore... if I invented the iPhone in 1980 I coulda had a billion dollars... therefore... everyone with an iPhone is a billionaire. Transitive property. Basically. QED!

And I'm like "Yes I can see why someone would pay millions of dollars for this very smart thinking."
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 11:17:27 AM
This is the longest millennials suck/millennials have it harder argument I've seen that doesn't use the term millennials.

Not everyone in their 30s is a millenial. Only about half of them.

article based on people in their early 30s having it rougher than people in their early 40s .... ie millenials.

i'm a millenial ... 30 in 1.5 months. life has been a cake walk ... smart parents who were boomers who taught me how to save alot ... then found this site and my dad is crazy impressed with how this is all possible.

i'm not a come from nothing to something but my parents were.  i'm not gonna say i didnt have it way easier than some i probably did and do but to blanket blame another generation? for our generation's ignorant continued consumption is just a complainypants way to look at the world.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: franklin w. dixon on September 30, 2016, 11:19:18 AM
Like "my car has 1000 times the fuel capacity of idk an old timey whale oil lamp" mmhm that's a fact which proves I'm 1000 times richer than... a hypothetical past person... who used a lamp... ? ?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 11:23:00 AM
yeah its hard to amass wealth when you're an over consumer ...

Missing the point.  The 80's born kids are no more 'over consumers' than the 70's born ones.  The difference is lower income, less generous retirements and unaffordable housing. The baby boomers in their insatiable lust for more, destroyed the futures of the younger generations. Good riddance to the worst generation as they disappear. (I understand that kids of the 70's are not baby boomers, I am talking about the system that is still largely run by the boomers)

Yeah so hard to amass wealth. I was born in the mid 80s. I have a mountain

Obviously the folks on this board are going to be different than the status quo. Another 81er here and I am doing better than almost anyone I know - but it certainly isn't easy. I think amassing wealth IS hard, takes a lot of work and self-sacrifice, and I don't find it particularly pleasant.

I've said this in another thread a while back, but even though I am saving money, I'm working twice as hard as my folks did (especially if you factor in that I am the breadwinner and am doing a large share of the housekeeping - but childcare is outsourced) and I'm making less money doing so than my father made at a 40 hour a week job the same age. Doesn't mean I'm not growing my nest egg, just means I have to work a little harder to do so.

wait a minute  just wanna back up here.  your statements contradict themselves or mustachianism IMO. correct me where i'm wrong in assumptions below and fill in the gaps please

1. you said you're the Breadwinner - assume you have a spouse who doesnt earn income
2. you're doing a large share of the house keeping - spouse doesnt earn income doesnt compute
3. youre outsourcing childcare -  spouse doesnt earn income does not compute

Spouse is
A. handicapped or unable to do things
B. an artist of some kind trying to make it
c. something else that doesnt earn an income but requires lots of time
D. doesnt exist

all of the above 4 are unique circumstance and choices that could have affected anyone in any generation this is not a product of the year you were born.

So please fill in the gaps for me where my brain computer went WTF.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on September 30, 2016, 11:25:53 AM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

You do realize how much of an outlier even reaching a $100k income by age 34 is, let alone having $100k every year for the 10 preceding years (or a salary progression that would allow similar wealth accumulation), right?

life has been a cake walk ... smart parents who were boomers who taught me how to save alot ... then found this site and my dad is crazy impressed with how this is all possible.

i'm not a come from nothing to something but my parents were.  i'm not gonna say i didnt have it way easier than some i probably did

Even with that attempt at acknowledging your advantage, you are way, way underestimating it.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 11:31:13 AM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

You do realize how much of an outlier even reaching a $100k income by age 34 is, let alone having $100k every year for the 10 preceeding years (or a salary progression that would allow similar wealth accumulation), right?

life has been a cake walk ... smart parents who were boomers who taught me how to save alot ... then found this site and my dad is crazy impressed with how this is all possible.

i'm not a come from nothing to something but my parents were.  i'm not gonna say i didnt have it way easier than some i probably did

Even with that attempt at acknowledging your advantage, you are way, way underestimating it.

i'm not saying a single person i was figure 2 50k salaries sorry i didnt indicate that.  either way i dont know how people are trying to say its harder now.  in 1981 the internet didnt exist i didnt have this wealth of knowledge for how to minimize and communicate with like minded people from all over the country. oh yeah and i can access that in my pocket 24/7
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Bicycle_B on September 30, 2016, 11:37:00 AM
I love the bizarre technofetishism that's like "Ah! But they invented the iPhone! How about them apples!" because it's so trivially incoherent. Like every single time the argument is trotted out line item one is like A Computer Has One Quadrillion Times The Processing Power Of A Scribe! Take THAT, ancient Egypt! with no reference to any connection between Limitless Gigahertz and people's ability to "be alive" or "have a house" or "go to the doctor" or "attend school."

So there's this bizarre backwards reasoning which hypothesizes that the iPhone didn't exist in 1980... therefore... if I invented the iPhone in 1980 I coulda had a billion dollars... therefore... everyone with an iPhone is a billionaire. Transitive property. Basically. QED!

And I'm like "Yes I can see why someone would pay millions of dollars for this very smart thinking."

(brandishes cane) You say tomayto, I say tomahto.  You say incoherent, I say perfectly clear. 

I was alive in 1980...living in a house...making occasional doctor visits...going to school.  Similar today except I learn online for fun.  I don't find the internet trivial, though it's what I most often access on my iPhone.

Two cheers for PizzaSteve.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on September 30, 2016, 11:38:12 AM
You do realize how much of an outlier even reaching a $100k income by age 34 is, let alone having $100k every year for the 10 preceding years (or a salary progression that would allow similar wealth accumulation), right?

i'm not saying a single person i was figure 2 50k salaries sorry i didnt indicate that.

Even as household income, that situation is still an outlier!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: StarBright on September 30, 2016, 11:41:12 AM

wait a minute  just wanna back up here.  your statements contradict themselves or mustachianism IMO. correct me where i'm wrong in assumptions below and fill in the gaps please

1. you said you're the Breadwinner - assume you have a spouse who doesnt earn income
2. you're doing a large share of the house keeping - spouse doesnt earn income doesnt compute
3. youre outsourcing childcare -  spouse doesnt earn income does not compute

Spouse is
A. handicapped or unable to do things
B. an artist of some kind trying to make it
c. something else that doesnt earn an income but requires lots of time
D. doesnt exist

all of the above 4 are unique circumstance and choices that could have affected anyone in any generation this is not a product of the year you were born.

So please fill in the gaps for me where my brain computer went WTF.

Sorry - I probably should not have used breadwinner (though I was until this last year). I used it out of habit. I always thought of the term used as the main earner of the household, not necessarily the ONLY earner.

DH was a PhD student for years so I was the breadwinner and primary home person as well (that also explains childcare being outsourced).Now he has a job though I still make significantly more money. I understand that Academia is often a weird outlier when it comes to job/income conversations because it is years of low/no wages with a generally decent payoff at the end.

I guess I always find conversations like this so interesting because my DH and I live a VERY comparable life to my parents and they will even say that they had it easier than we do.  I guess I'm sort of shocked when people pass it all off as "complainy-pants."

Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of consumerism out there, but health insurance, education costs and child care costs legitimately take up a huge chunk of income (on top of income stagnating).

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: franklin w. dixon on September 30, 2016, 11:41:59 AM
I love the bizarre technofetishism that's like "Ah! But they invented the iPhone! How about them apples!" because it's so trivially incoherent. Like every single time the argument is trotted out line item one is like A Computer Has One Quadrillion Times The Processing Power Of A Scribe! Take THAT, ancient Egypt! with no reference to any connection between Limitless Gigahertz and people's ability to "be alive" or "have a house" or "go to the doctor" or "attend school."

So there's this bizarre backwards reasoning which hypothesizes that the iPhone didn't exist in 1980... therefore... if I invented the iPhone in 1980 I coulda had a billion dollars... therefore... everyone with an iPhone is a billionaire. Transitive property. Basically. QED!

And I'm like "Yes I can see why someone would pay millions of dollars for this very smart thinking."

(brandishes cane) You say tomayto, I say tomahto.  You say incoherent, I say perfectly clear. 

I was alive in 1980...living in a house...making occasional doctor visits...going to school.  Similar today except I learn online for fun.  I don't find the internet trivial, though it's what I most often access on my iPhone.

Two cheers for PizzaSteve.
but

but

your description is literally my exact point

"Similar today except I learn online for fun" is why "phones exist" doesn't magically negate economic reality
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on September 30, 2016, 11:44:39 AM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

No you're wrong.   If you make 1M gross in 10 years, after tax that's like say 750K.  You are telling me .65*750K=488K invested over a median of 5 years (10/2) is enough to amass 1M?  I don't think so.  Not to mention how ludicrous it is to expect most people to gross 1M in 10 years.  Come on people, let's get real!   

Even MMM himself and his wife didn't reach 1M in 10 years. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: franklin w. dixon on September 30, 2016, 11:50:22 AM
PLUS as always I'm like "????" that people can look at stuff like

(http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03575/home_ownership_3575198b.jpg)

and be like "well In My Opinions the reason is that young people SUCK. Not like us smart and good old people, who rule." As if, again, generational cohorts have fluctuating values of virtuons and that's what explains economics rather than, you know, material reality, or all history heretofore.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 11:57:01 AM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

No you're wrong.   If you make 1M gross in 10 years, after tax that's like say 750K.  You are telling me .65*750K=488K invested over a median of 5 years (10/2) is enough to amass 1M?  I don't think so.  Not to mention how ludicrous it is to expect most people to gross 1M in 10 years.  Come on people, let's get real!   

Even MMM himself and his wife didn't reach 1M in 10 years.

65k compounded at 7% is worth right around 1MM in 10 years.

also what country are you in that you pay 25% tax on all your income?

grossing IMM isnt hard with 2 engineers. we will hit it in 10 years quite easily

say you made 100k a year for 10 years from day one.  with 2 people each making 50k ... they max their 401k's 36k tax free they max their HSA 6750 tax free they max their IRAs 11k tax free ... total taxable is now down to 46250 - standard deduction of ~20k and we're at actual taxable income of 26250

taxes annually on 26250 would be 2563 including my state taxes.  add in 7.5% for fica on all but the HSA cont.   7k so total taxes in 10 years would be around 100k ... and it would take this couple saving nothing else 12 years to hit 1MM at 7% and 53750 in savings. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Bicycle_B on September 30, 2016, 12:00:15 PM
I love the bizarre technofetishism that's like "Ah! But they invented the iPhone! How about them apples!" because it's so trivially incoherent. Like every single time the argument is trotted out line item one is like A Computer Has One Quadrillion Times The Processing Power Of A Scribe! Take THAT, ancient Egypt! with no reference to any connection between Limitless Gigahertz and people's ability to "be alive" or "have a house" or "go to the doctor" or "attend school."

So there's this bizarre backwards reasoning which hypothesizes that the iPhone didn't exist in 1980... therefore... if I invented the iPhone in 1980 I coulda had a billion dollars... therefore... everyone with an iPhone is a billionaire. Transitive property. Basically. QED!

And I'm like "Yes I can see why someone would pay millions of dollars for this very smart thinking."

(brandishes cane) You say tomayto, I say tomahto.  You say incoherent, I say perfectly clear. 

I was alive in 1980...living in a house...making occasional doctor visits...going to school.  Similar today except I learn online for fun.  I don't find the internet trivial, though it's what I most often access on my iPhone.

Two cheers for PizzaSteve.
but

but

your description is literally my exact point

"Similar today except I learn online for fun" is why "phones exist" doesn't magically negate economic reality

The similarities are real, but so is the improvement in connectivity and cheap computing power. 
Because of the similarities, I know a significant difference when I see one.  Hello, internet!

Since some things are the same and others are much better, overall it's somewhat better.  Saying nothing has improved since 1980 is as false as saying that everything is much better. 

That is economic reality.  PizzaSteve seems to be a credible source, making reasonable points.

PS. If you wish to argue that some of the increased computing power is wasted through inefficient usage, I will agree.  Much  "advancement" is also invalidated by using technology in ways that weaken us (cars instead of bicycles, escalators into the gym, etc).  But those things still don't change the fact that overall there is improvement.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: wenchsenior on September 30, 2016, 12:03:03 PM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

No you're wrong.   If you make 1M gross in 10 years, after tax that's like say 750K.  You are telling me .65*750K=488K invested over a median of 5 years (10/2) is enough to amass 1M?  I don't think so.  Not to mention how ludicrous it is to expect most people to gross 1M in 10 years.  Come on people, let's get real!   

Even MMM himself and his wife didn't reach 1M in 10 years.

65k compounded at 7% is worth right around 1MM in 10 years.

also what country are you in that you pay 25% tax on all your income?

grossing IMM isnt hard with 2 engineers. we will hit it in 10 years quite easily

If that math didn't work, our plan would be screwed LOL! (Thankfully, it does, and we're right on schedule).
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: DA on September 30, 2016, 12:08:21 PM
Three rather important categories of goods have indisputably become a lot more expensive in the last 30 years:  housing, education, and medical care.  The first two weigh rather heavily on people in their 30s.  Medical care is more of a problem for older folks, but they're covered by Medicare (not saying it pays 100%, but they're still covered). 

But even though this is true, and no matter whose fault it is, people who live in the U.S/Canada/Australia/Western Europe are absurdly rich in material terms, even if they are relatively poor within in their own society.  MMM's critique that people waste too much money and don't save/invest enough is still accurate, even if factors out of the control of 30-somethings are making their entrée into middle-class adulthood a lot harder than their parents' journey. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on September 30, 2016, 12:15:20 PM
grossing IMM isnt hard with 2 engineers. we will hit it in 10 years quite easily

First of all, not all kinds of engineers gross even $50K each early in their careers (for example: civil engineers). Second, even among engineers, many are not in double-engineer households. Third, the vast majority of people are in jobs that make much less than even the lowest-paid engineers!

If you want to make arguments about millennials as a group, you need to start with assumptions a lot closer to the median -- and the median is pretty much what you'd make being a cashier at Wal-Mart, not an engineer.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: trek240 on September 30, 2016, 12:23:45 PM
This is the longest millennials suck/millennials have it harder argument I've seen that doesn't use the term millennials.

Not everyone in their 30s is a millenial. Only about half of them.

article based on people in their early 30s having it rougher than people in their early 40s .... ie millenials.

i'm a millenial ... 30 in 1.5 months. life has been a cake walk ... smart parents who were boomers who taught me how to save alot ... then found this site and my dad is crazy impressed with how this is all possible.

i'm not a come from nothing to something but my parents were.  i'm not gonna say i didnt have it way easier than some i probably did and do but to blanket blame another generation? for our generation's ignorant continued consumption is just a complainypants way to look at the world.

I'm sure some male white privilege factors in to why you had such an easy time. And good on your parents.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on September 30, 2016, 12:26:34 PM
65k compounded at 7% is worth right around 1MM in 10 years.

grossing IMM isnt hard with 2 engineers. we will hit it in 10 years quite easily


First of all, you can't compound over 10 years since even if you average 100K over 10 years, you're likely not starting at 100K.  More likely you start at say 70K. 

Second, FICA is 6.2%, then you have state taxes, health premiums, etc and easily you could have maybe 75-80% of your gross income to save. 

Third, of course it's easier to reach 1M if you're married, but not everybody gets married by age 30.  And it's not easy to find a frugal, high income person to marry either.   

Your posts are full of "bootstraps" thinking.  Newsflash:  Not everyone has been as fortunate as you, you cannot assume just because you did it that it's so easy for everyone else. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: trek240 on September 30, 2016, 12:29:11 PM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

No you're wrong.   If you make 1M gross in 10 years, after tax that's like say 750K.  You are telling me .65*750K=488K invested over a median of 5 years (10/2) is enough to amass 1M?  I don't think so.  Not to mention how ludicrous it is to expect most people to gross 1M in 10 years.  Come on people, let's get real!   

Even MMM himself and his wife didn't reach 1M in 10 years.

65k compounded at 7% is worth right around 1MM in 10 years.

also what country are you in that you pay 25% tax on all your income?

grossing IMM isnt hard with 2 engineers. we will hit it in 10 years quite easily

say you made 100k a year for 10 years from day one.  with 2 people each making 50k ... they max their 401k's 36k tax free they max their HSA 6750 tax free they max their IRAs 11k tax free ... total taxable is now down to 46250 - standard deduction of ~20k and we're at actual taxable income of 26250

taxes annually on 26250 would be 2563 including my state taxes.  add in 7.5% for fica on all but the HSA cont.   7k so total taxes in 10 years would be around 100k ... and it would take this couple saving nothing else 12 years to hit 1MM at 7% and 53750 in savings.

Well you should realise that engineers make up a very small portion of the population. And many make significantly less than 100k. The 90s dot com boom is over.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 12:31:19 PM
can someone find the last thread on this where we had comparisons of actual stuff in there like how much safer and cheaper cars are now. and how all things considered in housing if size and appliances were equal its cheaper now. i think this was comparing the 50s to modern day but we are just gross over consumers and even if you cant earn a high income you can still save more and retire quite comfortably in your early 40s. 

coming out of school in 2010 my wife (civil) had a 50k a year job that was pretty much the basement in the mdwest. i as an electrical was at 55k ... new hires now are bringing in 60 and 65k in the midwest.  at 65k engineer and a teacher making 35k you hit 100k gross.

talking in terms of numbers like 1MM etc dont make a ton of sense ... the comment that MMM didnt have 1MM isnt entirely accurate b/c he had a paid off house and it was 2008 and 800k then had the buying power of 1MM now ... r
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 12:33:33 PM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

No you're wrong.   If you make 1M gross in 10 years, after tax that's like say 750K.  You are telling me .65*750K=488K invested over a median of 5 years (10/2) is enough to amass 1M?  I don't think so.  Not to mention how ludicrous it is to expect most people to gross 1M in 10 years.  Come on people, let's get real!   

Even MMM himself and his wife didn't reach 1M in 10 years.

65k compounded at 7% is worth right around 1MM in 10 years.

also what country are you in that you pay 25% tax on all your income?

grossing IMM isnt hard with 2 engineers. we will hit it in 10 years quite easily

say you made 100k a year for 10 years from day one.  with 2 people each making 50k ... they max their 401k's 36k tax free they max their HSA 6750 tax free they max their IRAs 11k tax free ... total taxable is now down to 46250 - standard deduction of ~20k and we're at actual taxable income of 26250

taxes annually on 26250 would be 2563 including my state taxes.  add in 7.5% for fica on all but the HSA cont.   7k so total taxes in 10 years would be around 100k ... and it would take this couple saving nothing else 12 years to hit 1MM at 7% and 53750 in savings.

Well you should realise that engineers make up a very small portion of the population. And many make significantly less than 100k. The 90s dot com boom is over.

they should be we have a shortage we also have a shortage of trade laborers which could easily be making in the mid 50s by their early 20s.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: trek240 on September 30, 2016, 12:39:15 PM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

No you're wrong.   If you make 1M gross in 10 years, after tax that's like say 750K.  You are telling me .65*750K=488K invested over a median of 5 years (10/2) is enough to amass 1M?  I don't think so.  Not to mention how ludicrous it is to expect most people to gross 1M in 10 years.  Come on people, let's get real!   

Even MMM himself and his wife didn't reach 1M in 10 years.

65k compounded at 7% is worth right around 1MM in 10 years.

also what country are you in that you pay 25% tax on all your income?

grossing IMM isnt hard with 2 engineers. we will hit it in 10 years quite easily

say you made 100k a year for 10 years from day one.  with 2 people each making 50k ... they max their 401k's 36k tax free they max their HSA 6750 tax free they max their IRAs 11k tax free ... total taxable is now down to 46250 - standard deduction of ~20k and we're at actual taxable income of 26250

taxes annually on 26250 would be 2563 including my state taxes.  add in 7.5% for fica on all but the HSA cont.   7k so total taxes in 10 years would be around 100k ... and it would take this couple saving nothing else 12 years to hit 1MM at 7% and 53750 in savings.

Well you should realise that engineers make up a very small portion of the population. And many make significantly less than 100k. The 90s dot com boom is over.

they should be we have a shortage we also have a shortage of trade laborers which could easily be making in the mid 50s by their early 20s.

I'm just saying what I see from working with many clients. Most hire Indians for bottom dollar. You can get high salaries like you are describing but they are usually in HCOL areas. And usually it makes more sense financially to take a lower paid position in a LCOL area.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on September 30, 2016, 12:42:40 PM
I'm finding all this talk about how fast a motivated couple can reach the $1MM milepost a bit off the mark.

What's being examined here how 30-something's NW has halved in a decade, from £53k ($68.8k) to £27k ($35K).  To put it another way, median net worth is now equatable to about 7 months pay. Awful by any metric.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on September 30, 2016, 12:45:42 PM
the comment that MMM didnt have 1MM isnt entirely accurate b/c he had a paid off house and it was 2008 and 800k then had the buying power of 1MM now ... r

So what if he did have 1M?  Point is if even he (with high income + high income, frugal wife) barely made it, how do you expect most people to make it?   

The original 1M comment made it seem like anyone could do it when truth is some small % can do it given certain conditions. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on September 30, 2016, 12:53:02 PM
can someone find the last thread on this where we had comparisons of actual stuff in there like how much safer and cheaper cars are now. and how all things considered in housing if size and appliances were equal its cheaper now.

"If X were equal" only matters if that equal thing is actually available. I mean, sure -- an economy car in 2016 is a lot fancier than one from 1980, and conversely, a new but 1980-quality economy car would be pretty damn cheap. But the point is moot because the damn things don't exist and therefore it is not a choice to buy them!

Similarly, yes, a new "starter house" built with the same size, quality and amenities as the average "starter house" from 1980 would be very affordable -- but good luck finding one!

coming out of school in 2010 my wife (civil) had a 50k a year job that was pretty much the basement in the mdwest.

No. At worst, it was "pretty much the basement" among the jobs that actually existed. Coming out of school in 2009, I was unable to find a civil engineering job at all for over a year because there was very little construction happening due to the recession. When I did finally find one, it was at $40k.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: franklin w. dixon on September 30, 2016, 12:54:17 PM
Well you should realise that engineers make up a very small portion of the population. And many make significantly less than 100k. The 90s dot com boom is over.
AND what always happens in every one of these dang threads is that people conflate what makes sense as like, advice to one person, with description of a social class. That's why you always get the posts that are like YEAH WELL YOU CAN MAKE FIFTY LARGE AS A HOME APPRAISER. CASE CLOSED. which isn't strictly false but also isn't particularly useful because it's not like 50 million unemployed people can all be home appraisers, or mighty engineers astride the slide rule of history, or welders, or whatever dumb thing. So the whole conversation becomes a back and forth between "the state of the world is X" and "everyone should be above average" which is like. Ok. Everyone "should" shit bricks of solid gold but my old nemesis material reality has stymied me yet again.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: StarBright on September 30, 2016, 01:17:17 PM
can someone find the last thread on this where we had comparisons of actual stuff in there like how much safer and cheaper cars are now. and how all things considered in housing if size and appliances were equal its cheaper now. i think this was comparing the 50s to modern day but we are just gross over consumers and even if you cant earn a high income you can still save more and retire quite comfortably in your early 40s. 


I can't find it - but didn't that thread also conclude that appliances and similar items are one time purchases while childcare, medical, housing, and education are often expensive and ongoing expenses?

IE- I can buy a cheap used washing machine and save myself a few hundred bucks, but if my medical insurance costs are hundreds of dollars every single month does the cheap washing machine really help me that much?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: franklin w. dixon on September 30, 2016, 01:38:18 PM
can someone find the last thread on this where we had comparisons of actual stuff in there like how much safer and cheaper cars are now. and how all things considered in housing if size and appliances were equal its cheaper now. i think this was comparing the 50s to modern day but we are just gross over consumers and even if you cant earn a high income you can still save more and retire quite comfortably in your early 40s. 


I can't find it - but didn't that thread also conclude that appliances and similar items are one time purchases while childcare, medical, housing, and education are often expensive and ongoing expenses?

IE- I can buy a cheap used washing machine and save myself a few hundred bucks, but if my medical insurance costs are hundreds of dollars every single month does the cheap washing machine really help me that much?
"how 2 pay off ur $300000 medical bills by kickin' the starbucks habit, you lazy sack of shit young person" by engineer dad, king of math. "weird how my kids don't call" muses engineer dad unrelatedly
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: honeybbq on September 30, 2016, 01:53:41 PM
I was born in the late 70's. Interesting discussion.

I'm not sure I agree about the materialism, but I do think maybe older people are more willing to toss things and find them more disposable. I actually see a lot of younger people reusing, repurposing, and fixing things that might otherwise get thrown away. But I live in the pacNW where it's cool to wear vintage and grunge. :)

I'd just like to point out for the calculating people that the amount you could contribute to your 401k was not 18k but closer to 12k in the early 2000's. So it's not quite 18k x 15 or what have you.

Still, no excuse to not have accrued.

I have about 7 figures in my retirement accounts; I've been maxing since day I got out of grad school and that includes the 2 recessions - one which took around 40% of my savings. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: moof on September 30, 2016, 03:41:05 PM
Amazing how statistics can be used to say almost anything.  I will say that timing makes a huge difference to luck.  Looking for jobs during a down period while companies are purging can wipe out your savings and stunt your long term earnings in big ways.

Wife and I were born in 77.  We missed out on most of the go-go 90's, and I got caught up in the dotcom crash with a layoff, but did just fine thanks to having at least a couple years of experience to get my foot in the door.  I was mostly unaffected by the 2008 crash thanks to having about 10 years experience at that point.  My wife tried to change careers by going back to school in 2006, getting her masters in education in 2008, which wiped out hiring for new teachers for a few years.  She become stay-at-home with the new kid instead.  Early in my career I constantly heard just how great it used to be (bonuses, beer bashes, free snacks, meaningful stock options, etc), most of the perks and wild times had been rung out and only lived on in nostalgia.

Our good friends were both born in 86.  Upon graduating with the same degree as me the husband was out of school just in time for the 2008 crash, and could not get a job for a couple years.  No prior job, so no unemployment either.  He is on his feet now, but they started major wealth accumulation several years later than we did due to the big hole they dug just surviving (and building a good frugal muscle).  The wife got a teaching certificate in 2012 when things were on an upswing, so she got a decent teaching position right away without going up the substitute ladder.  In fact they are now saving at a higher rate than we are, but they have a good bit of catch up left to do.

Young folks who hit the job scene in 2008 or the following few years had to weather particularly tough odds to get a good job, and often locked in lower salaries for years to come.  Many locked in lower paying jobs instead of the career they trained for just to make ends meet.  Once your resume has a mediocre position listed you are setup to stay in that track without amazing luck and determination.  Our safety net in the USA is weak and cruel, yet still under attack.  Simple bad timing luck can result in very different outcomes when all else is equal.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: neil on September 30, 2016, 03:58:43 PM
This difference is significantly overblown.  On some level, less is less and I won't argue about that.  But a nominal difference of ~25K is really only 1-2 years of employment.  Considering individuals create expenses regardless of whether or not they are employed, the simple choice of consuming more education (in place of working) may very well account for the difference - and we all know that more education does not necessarily mean more pay.  I graduated with a BS in 2002 and chose to find work (which was tough, but I did it) rather than pursue a masters (which many of my peers chose).

There's a lot more newer concepts to career paths that are anti-FIRE but would affect these numbers.  Gap years, sabbaticals, flexible employment.  People in their 30s today overall prefer these options and they are more available than in the past.  People are making these choices even if they aren't the best idea for their financial situation and I would expect that to reflect in the data somewhat.

It's pretty easy to find data on expected lifetime earnings by degree and current median salaries, but not a lot on how much people of different age groups earned today.  It still wouldn't explain why but it would better illustrate whether the difference is a spending problem or an income problem.  Median income is a snapshot (and theoretically high employment may not factor into a median significantly) while median net worth is a measurement of a person's financial path.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: SwordGuy on September 30, 2016, 05:29:31 PM
I entered the workforce in the early 80s.  Economy in the area I moved to (to be with the woman I loved) had double-digit unemployment.    We lived on 1/3 the median family income for 5 years and paid child support.   We were frugal and our health held out so we didn't end up in debt. 

I was 30 when I first got a job making median family income.  My wife, who was 40, went to college at that time.  She wasn't employed full time until over a decade later when she earned her PhD.

We could easily have just inflated our lifestyle from 33% median income to 50% median income instead of 94% median income.   We would have felt like pigs in clover at our newfound affluence.

We didn't (because we pissed away a lot of money before we learned better), but let's explore what would have happened to our finances if we did.  We'll ignore raises.  Median family income was about $30,000 at that time.   Saving $12,500 a year for 10 years, at a 7% return, we would have just shy of $173,000.

I can only tell you that, at that point in my life, the thought of having that much wealth in 10 years was beyond belief.
At that point in time, let's pretend my wife got a horribly paying job that only brought in $10,000 above job expenses.
And, being frugal, we invested it.

We would, in 10 years, have $650,000 in wealth.

That would be $650,000 more than about 23% of Americans have saved at retirement age.  And half a million more than most.

Ask Americans at retirement age if they would consider themselves well off if they had half a million dollars in the bank.   

If people can get to median family income and don't live in a crazy high cost of living area like Manhattan or San Francisco, they can easily amass wealth if that's what they choose to do.

But they have to:

a) know that it is possible,
b) want to do it,
c) want to do it more than they want to spend on wasteful consumer goods,
d) want to do it more than they dislike getting snarky comments about being cheap from "friends",
e) take the time to learn how to do it,
f) do it.

Lots of reasons to give up or never try.

I try to do my part to make sure that people I know are aware that it is possible.



Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cathy on September 30, 2016, 07:21:41 PM
The level of complaining in this thread is off the charts.


You have to be fucking kidding me!   That's 10 yrs after college.  You'd have to be making an average of 100K per year with a savings rate of near 100% after tax. ...

It turns out that $100,000 per year is not a mystical income ceiling (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/can-you-be-a-mustachian-in-silicon-valley/msg969887/#msg969887). It's open to you to earn more than that. In fact, the great thing about the United States is that you can earn as much as you want. If you want to earn $300,000 per year instead, nothing is stopping you. If that's not enough, and you want to earn $1 million per year instead, you can make that happen if you so choose. There is no limit in the USA.


You do realize how much of an outlier even reaching a $100k income by age 34 is ..., right?

Luckily, income level is within your control. If your income level were determined by the roll of a die (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/are-you-a-coward/msg1226583/#msg1226583), you might have a point, but it's not. It's up to you. You, Jack, could be earning $250,000 per year within 5 years if that is something you want. I could give you specific instructions on how to achieve that (*). But I bet you wouldn't do it because it would involve a lot of hard work and would completely uproot your life. It really comes down to choices.

((*) Note: The fact that I could give you specific instructions does not mean that I will actually give them to you. It is merely a rhetorical device. See also the message below about how this post contains only general information, etc.)
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 07:56:12 PM
The level of complaining in this thread is off the charts.


You have to be fucking kidding me!   That's 10 yrs after college.  You'd have to be making an average of 100K per year with a savings rate of near 100% after tax. ...

It turns out that $100,000 per year is not a mystical income ceiling (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/can-you-be-a-mustachian-in-silicon-valley/msg969887/#msg969887). It's open to you to earn more than that. In fact, the great thing about the United States is that you can earn as much as you want. If you want to earn $300,000 per year instead, nothing is stopping you. If that's not enough, and you want to earn $1 million per year instead, you can make that happen if you so choose. There is no limit in the USA.


You do realize how much of an outlier even reaching a $100k income by age 34 is ..., right?

Luckily, income level is within your control. If your income level were determined by the roll of a die (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/are-you-a-coward/msg1226583/#msg1226583), you might have a point, but it's not. It's up to you. You, Jack, could be earning $250,000 per year within 5 years if that is something you want. I could give you specific instructions on how to achieve that (*). But I bet you wouldn't do it because it would involve a lot of hard work and would completely uproot your life. It really comes down to choices.

((*) Note: The fact that I could give you specific instructions does not mean that I will actually give them to you. See the message below about how this post contains only general information, etc.)

Almost as if my generation thought they were entitled to earn a billion a day doing what they loved. Skateboarding in the park.

That's been my issue with this whole thread. You were lucky. Yeah I had some things going my way.

But get the fuck over it. You are allowed to do whatever you want to make as much money as you want and live how you want. The previous generations paved the way for all of this.

It's a lack of drive. I make 100k a year at my job I side hustle another 20-30k. My job is demanding. And takes a lot of my life energy yet I still ha e time to side hustle other shit. Get over it millenials. You were born into a world make the most of it. So annoyed at the complaint pants posts here.

Posts about doing what you love vs fire.  Fire gives you the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want with in the laws of society. If what you love you want to do forever and are confident that'd the case go fucking do it. If you hate what you do and its not lucrative enough for you to save and do something different change it.

Every thing in your life in a first world free country was mostly of a choice you made.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on September 30, 2016, 08:16:32 PM

It turns out that $100,000 per year is not a mystical income ceiling (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/can-you-be-a-mustachian-in-silicon-valley/msg969887/#msg969887). It's open to you to earn more than that. In fact, the great thing about the United States is that you can earn as much as you want. If you want to earn $300,000 per year instead, nothing is stopping you. If that's not enough, and you want to earn $1 million per year instead, you can make that happen if you so choose. There is no limit in the USA.


This is absolutely nothing but simplistic, Republican type thinking.  Fact is half of people have below average IQ, you really think most of these people can earn 100K by late 20's?  I don't think so.  For the most part, it takes a high level of intelligence (and often in the right areas), luck, and hard work.   Not to mention the economy can't support more than a certain % of people making that much by late 20's. 

If someone as hard working, smart, lucky, and enterprising as MMM didn't clear 1M by age 30 by much if at all, you really think it's that simple? 

Lack of logic in this thread by some is astounding. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 08:19:32 PM

It turns out that $100,000 per year is not a mystical income ceiling (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/can-you-be-a-mustachian-in-silicon-valley/msg969887/#msg969887). It's open to you to earn more than that. In fact, the great thing about the United States is that you can earn as much as you want. If you want to earn $300,000 per year instead, nothing is stopping you. If that's not enough, and you want to earn $1 million per year instead, you can make that happen if you so choose. There is no limit in the USA.


This is absolutely nothing but simplistic, Republican type thinking.  Fact is half of people have below average IQ, you really think most of these people can earn 100K by late 20's?  I don't think so.  For the most part, it takes a high level of intelligence (and often in the right areas), luck, and hard work.   Not to mention the economy can't support more than a certain % of people making that much by late 20's. 

If someone as hard working, smart, lucky, and enterprising as MMM didn't clear 1M by age 30 by much if at all, you really think it's that simple? 

Lack of logic in this thread by some is astounding.

1. He did if you look at CPI compared to today

2. Survival of the fittest
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on September 30, 2016, 08:26:50 PM
I mean really explain that to me why does society owe a debt to those who don't understand. If we eliminate the bottom half thru poverty and dumb spending and raise the overall intelligence of society. The humans lost how?   

Most of this was meant in semi hyperbole.
But it's the exact opposite of the point the previous poster stated. 

We weren't meant to propagate idiots.  Idiots died in early times  now we keep diseased and mentally unable alive and some procreate. How does that help our civilization advance.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boognish on September 30, 2016, 09:32:27 PM
eugenics baby!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: chesebert on September 30, 2016, 10:28:40 PM

It turns out that $100,000 per year is not a mystical income ceiling (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/can-you-be-a-mustachian-in-silicon-valley/msg969887/#msg969887). It's open to you to earn more than that. In fact, the great thing about the United States is that you can earn as much as you want. If you want to earn $300,000 per year instead, nothing is stopping you. If that's not enough, and you want to earn $1 million per year instead, you can make that happen if you so choose. There is no limit in the USA.


This is absolutely nothing but simplistic, Republican type thinking.  Fact is half of people have below average IQ, you really think most of these people can earn 100K by late 20's?  I don't think so.  For the most part, it takes a high level of intelligence (and often in the right areas), luck, and hard work.   Not to mention the economy can't support more than a certain % of people making that much by late 20's. 

If someone as hard working, smart, lucky, and enterprising as MMM didn't clear 1M by age 30 by much if at all, you really think it's that simple? 

Lack of logic in this thread by some is astounding.
Wild guess that Cathy is a law student and has been running spreadsheets on how much he/she  (you never know) is going to make after graduation. I do not disagree with Cathy completely, but clearing 100K in your 20s and sustain that level of income for the next 10 years requires a lot of hard work and above average IQ.

@Cathy, you should try to work for 16+ hour days for a few weeks straight before talking about if you work hard blah blah blah. Not everyone can handle that kind of work.... You also have no idea what it takes to make $1M a year...the pain, suffering and sacrifice you would have to make before that is reality, assuming you don't come from money/power


MOD EDIT: Personal attacks are not allowed.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 01, 2016, 12:20:49 AM
Holy *.  The amount of complainypants in this thread is ridiculous. Yes, Border's two people making 50k each out of college is maybe not the NORM, but it's certainly not an extreme outlier.

As far as the actual topic from the OP, the idea of "wealth" being halved in a decade, let's stop talking anecdotes, and move to hard data.  The OP was hard data: "Those born in the early 1980s have an average wealth of £27,000 each, against the £53,000 those born in the 1970s had by the same age"

Alright, cool.

Now let's use some data to explain why.  Is it lower income?  Is it higher unemployment?  Is it lower home ownership rate?

The explanation put forth by nereo makes some sense to me.

There's a lot of data to back this up too: single-family homes are larger today than in the 1980s. The percentage of people who take overseas vacations has gone way up. The amount spent on restaurants is much higher today.

The bottom line is that real-median income of people in their 30s is slightly higher today compared to where it was in the 1980s.  The money is simply being spent and not saved.  Not surprisingl given the personal savings rate went from 9-10% in the 80s to around 4% today (and current 30-somethings saving at/around 0% of their income).
(https://macro.economicblogs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/household-income-by-age-bracket-median-real.gif)

If the median income of people in their 30s is HIGHER in real dollars, yet they have less net worth to show for it (while at the same time overseas vacations are up, restaurant spending is up, etc.) since the 80s (let alone a decade ago), this doesn't seem to be a fault of the economy, but a matter of fact based on the choices people are making.  Savings rates are down from 8-10% to 3-5% or so, and compounded over a decade, that's real value in net worth.  That savings rate (when wages are the same or higher in real terms) is a choice, as it's done with discretionary income.

No, I'm not hating on Millennials; had any other generation been in the same position, I think they'd have acted the same way.  Millenials get more consumeristic messages.  Remember the concept of "keeping up with the Jonses?"  We have that today, fiercer than ever.  A decade ago, Facebook was barely launched.  Instagram didn't exist.  Etc.

Now they see peers taking pictures of food from fancy restaurants, of their fancy vacations, etc. and posting these to social media, and there's enormous pressure to keep up.  It's not due to a character flaw with Millennials, but rather due to the circumstances.

I think those circumstances, though, are marketing and social media based.  Not economy based.  With real wages being HIGHER, I think the higher spending (and corresponding lower net worth) is a choice (though somewhat of a forced one--they may not know any other option, like MMM presents).

I think, despite real wages being the same or slightly higher over the last few decades, net worth, and savings rate, has continued to decline.  That's not a problem with Millennials; same thing happened to Gen X.  It's a problem with our consumer society.

That's what it seems like to me, based on the data, rather than anecdotes.  Anyone want to put out an alternate theory, based on data as well?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: UKMustache on October 01, 2016, 12:51:23 AM
Holy *.  The amount of complainypants in this thread is ridiculous. Yes, Border's two people making 50k each out of college is maybe not the NORM, but it's certainly not an extreme outlier.

As far as the actual topic from the OP, the idea of "wealth" being halved in a decade, let's stop talking anecdotes, and move to hard data.  The OP was hard data: "Those born in the early 1980s have an average wealth of £27,000 each, against the £53,000 those born in the 1970s had by the same age"

Alright, cool.

Now let's use some data to explain why.  Is it lower income?  Is it higher unemployment?  Is it lower home ownership rate?

The explanation put forth by nereo makes some sense to me.

There's a lot of data to back this up too: single-family homes are larger today than in the 1980s. The percentage of people who take overseas vacations has gone way up. The amount spent on restaurants is much higher today.

The bottom line is that real-median income of people in their 30s is slightly higher today compared to where it was in the 1980s.  The money is simply being spent and not saved.  Not surprisingl given the personal savings rate went from 9-10% in the 80s to around 4% today (and current 30-somethings saving at/around 0% of their income).
(https://macro.economicblogs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/household-income-by-age-bracket-median-real.gif)

If the median income of people in their 30s is HIGHER in real dollars, yet they have less net worth to show for it (while at the same time overseas vacations are up, restaurant spending is up, etc.) since the 80s (let alone a decade ago), this doesn't seem to be a fault of the economy, but a matter of fact based on the choices people are making.  Savings rates are down from 8-10% to 3-5% or so, and compounded over a decade, that's real value in net worth.  That savings rate (when wages are the same or higher in real terms) is a choice, as it's done with discretionary income.

No, I'm not hating on Millennials; had any other generation been in the same position, I think they'd have acted the same way.  Millenials get more consumeristic messages.  Remember the concept of "keeping up with the Jonses?"  We have that today, fiercer than ever.  A decade ago, Facebook was barely launched.  Instagram didn't exist.  Etc.

Now they see peers taking pictures of food from fancy restaurants, of their fancy vacations, etc. and posting these to social media, and there's enormous pressure to keep up.  It's not due to a character flaw with Millennials, but rather due to the circumstances.

I think those circumstances, though, are marketing and social media based.  Not economy based.  With real wages being HIGHER, I think the higher spending (and corresponding lower net worth) is a choice (though somewhat of a forced one--they may not know any other option, like MMM presents).

I think, despite real wages being the same or slightly higher over the last few decades, net worth, and savings rate, has continued to decline.  That's not a problem with Millennials; same thing happened to Gen X.  It's a problem with our consumer society.

That's what it seems like to me, based on the data, rather than anecdotes.  Anyone want to put out an alternate theory, based on data as well?


I agree with much of what you have said.

I would add though that in the UK (which is where the article is from) houses are actually getting much smaller over time and not bigger.  There's a number of factors influencing this and I'm not saying it's positive or negative, but it is the case.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cathy on October 01, 2016, 01:08:18 AM
... you should try to work for 16+ hour days for a few weeks straight before talking about if you work hard blah blah blah. Not everyone can handle that kind of work.... You also have no idea what it takes to make $1M a year...the pain, suffering and sacrifice you would have to make before that is reality, assuming you don't come from money/power

Readers might like this previous post of mine (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/$3mil-$1mil/msg679919/#msg679919) (from May 31, 2015), which discusses some related issues (you'll need to read the entire thread for the context, but the gist of it is that I discuss the tradeoffs involved in achieving higher income and why maximum happiness might be achieved at less than $1 million per year).

As I've noted before (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/antimustachian-wall-of-shame-and-comedy/i-can't-do-math-so-i-wrote-a-public-letter-to-my-ceo-and-get-myself-fired!/msg995347/#msg995347), I don't usually go into my personal circumstances, and I won't really do so here either, but I can safely say that I am familiar with hard work. In fact, my experiences with work are a big part of the reason that I advocate taking whatever measures are necessary to minimise the length of one's working career, a goal that I would think would resonate with more posters here than it actually does.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: former player on October 01, 2016, 01:42:45 AM
I would add though that in the UK (which is where the article is from) houses are actually getting much smaller over time and not bigger.  There's a number of factors influencing this and I'm not saying it's positive or negative, but it is the case.
Do you have a source for this?

I'm involved in a neighbourhood planning group, and one of the main issues we deal with is smaller older houses being massively extended, or knocked down and rebuilt much bigger.  Over time it means that the average size of houses here is getting bigger, and the availability of smaller, cheaper houses at entry level and for downsizing is disappearing.  (This is in an AONB so the supply of new building sites is limited.)

So while the average size for new builds in the country as a whole is small, the net effect of extensions and rebuilds is that on average houses are probably bigger.   And it's not unusual to see extensions on those smaller new builds (conservatories at the back, for instance) if there is room to do so.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Paul der Krake on October 01, 2016, 01:59:02 AM
To me, one of the key messages of MMM is that the way people live their lives by default is grossly inefficient. Therefore, median numbers for anything should be regarded as little more than a vague starting point- the point that someone who vaguely gives a shit should be able to reach with minimal fuss. That is true whether it is job income, saving rates, fitness levels (medals for finishing a 5K, are you kidding me?!), educational attainment, vehicle size, or virtually any other metric that gets touted as the new normal.

Just because many people do something doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 01, 2016, 02:06:33 AM
I would add though that in the UK (which is where the article is from) houses are actually getting much smaller over time and not bigger.  There's a number of factors influencing this and I'm not saying it's positive or negative, but it is the case.
Do you have a source for this?

UKM might have other sources for his claim, but I just did a quick Google search for you.

BBC and DailyMail Articles from 2011 and 2013:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14916580 (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14916580)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2398714/The-incredible-shrinking-houses-British-homes-built-just-HALF-size-1920s.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2398714/The-incredible-shrinking-houses-British-homes-built-just-HALF-size-1920s.html)

They do talk about new homes though, and do not address your point of rebuilds and add-ons.

Still going from 1,647 sq ft with 4 bedrooms 90 years ago to today’s equivalent of three bedrooms and 925 sq ft is a big enough difference that I'd doubt add-ons and rebuilds would fully cover the difference; it seems more likely than not that the new builds reflect the overall trend.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: UKMustache on October 01, 2016, 03:19:38 AM
I would add though that in the UK (which is where the article is from) houses are actually getting much smaller over time and not bigger.  There's a number of factors influencing this and I'm not saying it's positive or negative, but it is the case.
Do you have a source for this?

UKM might have other sources for his claim, but I just did a quick Google search for you.

BBC and DailyMail Articles from 2011 and 2013:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14916580 (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14916580)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2398714/The-incredible-shrinking-houses-British-homes-built-just-HALF-size-1920s.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2398714/The-incredible-shrinking-houses-British-homes-built-just-HALF-size-1920s.html)

They do talk about new homes though, and do not address your point of rebuilds and add-ons.

Still going from 1,647 sq ft with 4 bedrooms 90 years ago to today’s equivalent of three bedrooms and 925 sq ft is a big enough difference that I'd doubt add-ons and rebuilds would fully cover the difference; it seems more likely than not that the new builds reflect the overall trend.

You've literally typed a post which explains and references my point completely.  Cheers :D
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 01, 2016, 03:33:48 AM
You've literally typed a post which explains and references my point completely.  Cheers :D

haha, no worries.   :)

I don't think it negates former player's point though, that new construction isn't the only thing to look at.

Still, like I said, based on the amount of drop in size of new construction, I'd still bet on smaller being the trend, even with the add ons and rebuilds being bigger than the current new construction.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MrRealEstate on October 01, 2016, 05:45:08 AM


 Fact is half of people have below average IQ

well.... duh... half also have an above average IQ.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 01, 2016, 05:57:31 AM


 Fact is half of people have below average IQ

well.... duh... half also have an above average IQ.

And the third half are exactly average!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Paul der Krake on October 01, 2016, 08:20:55 AM
Posts like Franklin's truly make me wonder what life was like in the United States before the recession. I first visited in 2010, in the middle of what people called a national economic meltdown. It sure didn't look like one to me. Coming from the United Kingdom, apparently a second rate country, I saw US cities bustling with life, new companies cropping up, college dorms that looked nicer than anything I had ever seen before.

Were the streets in America paved with gold before that time or what?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: gggggg on October 01, 2016, 08:49:19 AM
I work with and manage alot of millennials (as most people do). I see several problems leading to their lower net worth. I think marketing has done it's job with younger folks, and they buy into more things than previous generations. Younger folks in general, aren't buying houses like we did, they are missing out on the forced savings. Peer pressure is greater than ever, to keep up with their social circle. They tend to job hop more than older generations. It seems if they aren't promoted in six months, they hop to another job, starting at the bottom again; they tend not to have patience to stick with a company, and work their way up. This isn't a bash, it's just things I've noticed. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 01, 2016, 08:53:16 AM
The level of complaining in this thread is off the charts.

You have to be fucking kidding me!   That's 10 yrs after college.  You'd have to be making an average of 100K per year with a savings rate of near 100% after tax. ...

It turns out that $100,000 per year is not a mystical income ceiling (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/can-you-be-a-mustachian-in-silicon-valley/msg969887/#msg969887). It's open to you to earn more than that. In fact, the great thing about the United States is that you can earn as much as you want. If you want to earn $300,000 per year instead, nothing is stopping you. If that's not enough, and you want to earn $1 million per year instead, you can make that happen if you so choose. There is no limit in the USA.

You have twisted the argument. Nobody (not even Luck12) is arguing that earning that much money is impossible for anyone; we're arguing that it's impossible for most people.

And if you disagree with that, then you need to explain this: if earning $300K in Silicon Valley is so easy, why isn't everyone doing it? And if you think it only comes down to intelligence or "drive" or something, then I guarantee that for every entrepreneur in Silicon Valley who is earning $300K, I can find another one who is equally intelligent and equally driven but isn't making that much money because the VCs flipped a coin and decided to fund the first person's idea even though the other one was equally good!

The income a person makes does not depend just on that person, it depends on supply and demand. It is literally impossible for everyone to make an above-average income (by definition!), regardless of how capable they are.

You do realize how much of an outlier even reaching a $100k income by age 34 is ..., right?

Luckily, income level is within your control. If your income level were determined by the roll of a die (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/are-you-a-coward/msg1226583/#msg1226583), you might have a point, but it's not. It's up to you. You, Jack, could be earning $250,000 per year within 5 years if that is something you want. I could give you specific instructions on how to achieve that (*). But I bet you wouldn't do it because it would involve a lot of hard work and would completely uproot your life. It really comes down to choices.

((*) Note: The fact that I could give you specific instructions does not mean that I will actually give them to you. It is merely a rhetorical device. See also the message below about how this post contains only general information, etc.)

Uh huh. Nice way to make a claim and then immediately backtrack from any responsibility for it. You can't do that and expect us to do anything but disregard it entirely!

Anyway: prove it.

(You're right: I probably wouldn't follow your instructions, because (a) the first instruction is almost certainly going to be "move to Silicon Valley" and $250K there translates to a much smaller difference in standard of living than the nominal difference would imply, and (b) I like my low-stress lifestyle. But I still want you to post them, because you claimed you could. I also want to see how many logical holes and implausible assumptions you end up packing into them! Besides, if you do somehow manage to exceed my plausibility expectations, they might help somebody else.)
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Gronnie on October 01, 2016, 09:35:12 AM


 Fact is half of people have below average IQ

well.... duh... half also have an above average IQ.

There might be significantly more than half of people above/below average IQ. Average != median...
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on October 01, 2016, 03:14:45 PM
The level of complaining in this thread is off the charts.

You have to be fucking kidding me!   That's 10 yrs after college.  You'd have to be making an average of 100K per year with a savings rate of near 100% after tax. ...

It turns out that $100,000 per year is not a mystical income ceiling (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/can-you-be-a-mustachian-in-silicon-valley/msg969887/#msg969887). It's open to you to earn more than that. In fact, the great thing about the United States is that you can earn as much as you want. If you want to earn $300,000 per year instead, nothing is stopping you. If that's not enough, and you want to earn $1 million per year instead, you can make that happen if you so choose. There is no limit in the USA.

You have twisted the argument. Nobody (not even Luck12) is arguing that earning that much money is impossible for anyone; we're arguing that it's impossible for most people.

And if you disagree with that, then you need to explain this: if earning $300K in Silicon Valley is so easy, why isn't everyone doing it? And if you think it only comes down to intelligence or "drive" or something, then I guarantee that for every entrepreneur in Silicon Valley who is earning $300K, I can find another one who is equally intelligent and equally driven but isn't making that much money because the VCs flipped a coin and decided to fund the first person's idea even though the other one was equally good!

The income a person makes does not depend just on that person, it depends on supply and demand. It is literally impossible for everyone to make an above-average income (by definition!), regardless of how capable they are.

You do realize how much of an outlier even reaching a $100k income by age 34 is ..., right?

Luckily, income level is within your control. If your income level were determined by the roll of a die (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/are-you-a-coward/msg1226583/#msg1226583), you might have a point, but it's not. It's up to you. You, Jack, could be earning $250,000 per year within 5 years if that is something you want. I could give you specific instructions on how to achieve that (*). But I bet you wouldn't do it because it would involve a lot of hard work and would completely uproot your life. It really comes down to choices.

((*) Note: The fact that I could give you specific instructions does not mean that I will actually give them to you. It is merely a rhetorical device. See also the message below about how this post contains only general information, etc.)

Uh huh. Nice way to make a claim and then immediately backtrack from any responsibility for it. You can't do that and expect us to do anything but disregard it entirely!

Anyway: prove it.

(You're right: I probably wouldn't follow your instructions, because (a) the first instruction is almost certainly going to be "move to Silicon Valley" and $250K there translates to a much smaller difference in standard of living than the nominal difference would imply, and (b) I like my low-stress lifestyle. But I still want you to post them, because you claimed you could. I also want to see how many logical holes and implausible assumptions you end up packing into them! Besides, if you do somehow manage to exceed my plausibility expectations, they might help somebody else.)

The amount of money you earn annually when speaking of 100k is not impossible for most. Most choose not to figure out how to make that much. Using the word impossible is awful.  And complainypants. Even if you aren't intelligent with the right drive and work ethic you can make that much money.

Don't have to move to silicone valley. I live in the heart of america and pull that in and I'm 29. It's not 100% from my job. I side hustle the fuck out of lots of things.

I'm pretty sure I could figure out how to make 100k without even having my base job. Just side hustling things.  Currently make 10k on tickets not trying. Another 15k buying and reselling things and this is about 5% of my time dedicated to these considering a 40 hour work week.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Gronnie on October 01, 2016, 04:36:53 PM
I live in a town in MN barely over 100,000 people. I got my degree in Computer Science from a local, public university a little less than 2 years ago when I was 28.

First year out of school made over 80k.

Set to make over 90k this year.

My wife has a BS in Nursing and makes between 70 and 80k.

It is possible to make not just 50k each right out of school, but much more -- with no graduate degree or fancy private school education needed. If making a good living is your goal, then you need to go into the correct fields and get the correct skills.

Those that think it is not possible are complainypants.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: ender on October 01, 2016, 04:40:48 PM
I'm just saying what I see from working with many clients. Most hire Indians for bottom dollar. You can get high salaries like you are describing but they are usually in HCOL areas. And usually it makes more sense financially to take a lower paid position in a LCOL area.

Every company has to lose at least a few million on oursourcing "cheap" labor fiascos.

Eventually, all of them will have experienced this and some of that "bottom dollar" myth will be over.

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Doubleh on October 02, 2016, 01:35:02 AM
I think the root of most of the disagreement here is the difference between what applies to the majority of the population, and what is possible of you set your mind to it. I don't think there is any contradiction in saying the majority of people are less wealthy, but at the same time it is possibly easier than ever to build wealth if you make an intentional decision to do so. And as other posters have pointed out the difference between 50k and 25k meet worth in your 30's is approximately zero in terms of badass mustachians like the fine folk here.

What has changed generationally, I would argue is that it is now both easier than ever to build wealth intentionally, and much less easy than ever to build wealth accidentally.

The former is due to factors like better information via the Internet, availability of much better cheaper index funds - in 2001  here in the uk you could choose ftse100 or ftse all share (uk total market) and easily pay 1% fees for a tracker ; now it is easy to buy an all world tracker with fees in the 0.1-0.3 range. Isa allowances have grown from 7k in 2007 to 20k in 2017.

The latter is driven by three main factors  - cost of university, falling house price ownership and the death of final salary pensions. Health care cost is not a factor here in the uk, as referenced by the original article, as we are lucky to have a fantastic (albeit not perfect) system of socialised medicine.

1. I started university in 1997, the last year to pay no tuition fees. The following year they were 1k per year, rising to 9k since 2012. The additional debt resulting from that is enough to explain the difference in net worth all by itself, although it is actually less of a burden than that would imply because they are government backed and interest and repayments are not on normal commercial terms.

2. In my parents generation and even those a few years older than me the predominant way to build wealth was to buy a house and wait a few years. People would move to London and work 10 years without needing to save a penny, then after that time sell their flat and buy a family house in the countryside outright with the tax free gains. This spawned several "move to the country" TV shows. Now this is no longer so easy due to rising prices, falling availability of mortgages and rising rental. Pre 2007, 100% mortgages were easily available and one bank, the now government owned Northern Rock came up with the stellar idea of 115% mortgages - instant negative equity! For years since 2007 you needed a minimum 20% deposit, that has started to relax now but only for the best prospects. And you now need to be able to prove your income unlike the older days when you could just make up whatever number you need (Google "self cert mortgage"). Property prices in London especially are now beyond the reach of most, leaving people renting for years at increasing rents.

3. My folks generation didn't need to understand about investing, their final salary pensions took care of that. Now the only jobs I ever see with one of these are in the public sector. Default saving rates in employer pensions (similar to 401k) are way too low to make up the gap - typically say 6% with match.

All of this means that the days of people getting rich without trying are over, and that will be a shock to many people. It is still possible to build wealth - maybe even easier than ever - but only if you educate yourself and make it a priority, and there is little in the way of public information to inform people of this. I do foresee this as a source of real tension in the years to come.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: JrDoctor on October 02, 2016, 02:06:18 AM
Alot are making comparisons between the UK and US as though it were identical, which it isnt wholly.
The housing market and geographical spread of jobs has meant wealth has been hard to generate in the UK.  Rents are dear and we are watching a structural shift towards an economy where more and more will perpetually rent.  Mortgages also protect the foolish in this country by tricking them into saving money in the form of housing equity.  When you look at young people my age saving, it is either for a house or some consumerist purchase, people are not 'investing' an awful lot, much like previous generations, but previous generations had the benefit of buying houses with comparable ease to today.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 02, 2016, 02:41:23 AM
I think the root of most of the disagreement here is the difference between what applies to the majority of the population, and what is possible of you set your mind to it.  I don't think there is any contradiction in saying the majority of people are less wealthy, but at the same time it is possibly easier than ever to build wealth if you make an intentional decision to do so.

Yes, definitely. I think that's the crux of it.

I think the data shows people are less well off.  The complainypants use that to say we're worse off than ever.  I think data also shows its easier to save than ever (see: MMM article I linked earlier). I'd use that to say we're better off than ever.

Quote
What has changed generationally, I would argue is that it is now both easier than ever to build wealth intentionally, and much less easy than ever to build wealth accidentally.

Interesting. I think you're right, and I think this might be a very interesting/important insight.

Thank you!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: former player on October 02, 2016, 03:05:09 AM
Alot are making comparisons between the UK and US as though it were identical, which it isnt wholly.
The housing market and geographical spread of jobs has meant wealth has been hard to generate in the UK.  Rents are dear and we are watching a structural shift towards an economy where more and more will perpetually rent.  Mortgages also protect the foolish in this country by tricking them into saving money in the form of housing equity.  When you look at young people my age saving, it is either for a house or some consumerist purchase, people are not 'investing' an awful lot, much like previous generations, but previous generations had the benefit of buying houses with comparable ease to today.
The geographical arbitrage in the UK has also shifted.  As Doubleh points out, in the past a move to London to grow equity by taking advantage of rising housing demand there worked well to "create" wealth.  These days London is an much more international city with the associated pressures, and a much more difficult place to live in and in which to make those sorts of gains.  Someone interested in building wealth in the UK now should probably go either to an expanding but cheaper city (Birmingham would be my choice) or to a poorer area of the country where housing is cheap compared to a professional/entrepreneurial income, and invest in the stock market.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on October 02, 2016, 04:07:32 AM
I think the root of most of the disagreement here is the difference between what applies to the majority of the population, and what is possible of you set your mind to it. I don't think there is any contradiction in saying the majority of people are less wealthy, but at the same time it is possibly easier than ever to build wealth if you make an intentional decision to do so. And as other posters have pointed out the difference between 50k and 25k meet worth in your 30's is approximately zero in terms of badass mustachians like the fine folk here.

What has changed generationally, I would argue is that it is now both easier than ever to build wealth intentionally, and much less easy than ever to build wealth accidentally.

The former is due to factors like better information via the Internet, availability of much better cheaper index funds - in 2001  here in the uk you could choose ftse100 or ftse all share (uk total market) and easily pay 1% fees for a tracker ; now it is easy to buy an all world tracker with fees in the 0.1-0.3 range. Isa allowances have grown from 7k in 2007 to 20k in 2017.

The latter is driven by three main factors  - cost of university, falling house price ownership and the death of final salary pensions. Health care cost is not a factor here in the uk, as referenced by the original article, as we are lucky to have a fantastic (albeit not perfect) system of socialised medicine.

1. I started university in 1997, the last year to pay no tuition fees. The following year they were 1k per year, rising to 9k since 2012. The additional debt resulting from that is enough to explain the difference in net worth all by itself, although it is actually less of a burden than that would imply because they are government backed and interest and repayments are not on normal commercial terms.

2. In my parents generation and even those a few years older than me the predominant way to build wealth was to buy a house and wait a few years. People would move to London and work 10 years without needing to save a penny, then after that time sell their flat and buy a family house in the countryside outright with the tax free gains. This spawned several "move to the country" TV shows. Now this is no longer so easy due to rising prices, falling availability of mortgages and rising rental. Pre 2007, 100% mortgages were easily available and one bank, the now government owned Northern Rock came up with the stellar idea of 115% mortgages - instant negative equity! For years since 2007 you needed a minimum 20% deposit, that has started to relax now but only for the best prospects. And you now need to be able to prove your income unlike the older days when you could just make up whatever number you need (Google "self cert mortgage"). Property prices in London especially are now beyond the reach of most, leaving people renting for years at increasing rents.

3. My folks generation didn't need to understand about investing, their final salary pensions took care of that. Now the only jobs I ever see with one of these are in the public sector. Default saving rates in employer pensions (similar to 401k) are way too low to make up the gap - typically say 6% with match.

All of this means that the days of people getting rich without trying are over, and that will be a shock to many people. It is still possible to build wealth - maybe even easier than ever - but only if you educate yourself and make it a priority, and there is little in the way of public information to inform people of this. I do foresee this as a source of real tension in the years to come.

Excellent analysis
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Gronnie on October 02, 2016, 09:21:16 AM
I think the root of most of the disagreement here is the difference between what applies to the majority of the population, and what is possible of you set your mind to it. I don't think there is any contradiction in saying the majority of people are less wealthy, but at the same time it is possibly easier than ever to build wealth if you make an intentional decision to do so. And as other posters have pointed out the difference between 50k and 25k meet worth in your 30's is approximately zero in terms of badass mustachians like the fine folk here.

What has changed generationally, I would argue is that it is now both easier than ever to build wealth intentionally, and much less easy than ever to build wealth accidentally.

The former is due to factors like better information via the Internet, availability of much better cheaper index funds - in 2001  here in the uk you could choose ftse100 or ftse all share (uk total market) and easily pay 1% fees for a tracker ; now it is easy to buy an all world tracker with fees in the 0.1-0.3 range. Isa allowances have grown from 7k in 2007 to 20k in 2017.

The latter is driven by three main factors  - cost of university, falling house price ownership and the death of final salary pensions. Health care cost is not a factor here in the uk, as referenced by the original article, as we are lucky to have a fantastic (albeit not perfect) system of socialised medicine.

1. I started university in 1997, the last year to pay no tuition fees. The following year they were 1k per year, rising to 9k since 2012. The additional debt resulting from that is enough to explain the difference in net worth all by itself, although it is actually less of a burden than that would imply because they are government backed and interest and repayments are not on normal commercial terms.

2. In my parents generation and even those a few years older than me the predominant way to build wealth was to buy a house and wait a few years. People would move to London and work 10 years without needing to save a penny, then after that time sell their flat and buy a family house in the countryside outright with the tax free gains. This spawned several "move to the country" TV shows. Now this is no longer so easy due to rising prices, falling availability of mortgages and rising rental. Pre 2007, 100% mortgages were easily available and one bank, the now government owned Northern Rock came up with the stellar idea of 115% mortgages - instant negative equity! For years since 2007 you needed a minimum 20% deposit, that has started to relax now but only for the best prospects. And you now need to be able to prove your income unlike the older days when you could just make up whatever number you need (Google "self cert mortgage"). Property prices in London especially are now beyond the reach of most, leaving people renting for years at increasing rents.

3. My folks generation didn't need to understand about investing, their final salary pensions took care of that. Now the only jobs I ever see with one of these are in the public sector. Default saving rates in employer pensions (similar to 401k) are way too low to make up the gap - typically say 6% with match.

All of this means that the days of people getting rich without trying are over, and that will be a shock to many people. It is still possible to build wealth - maybe even easier than ever - but only if you educate yourself and make it a priority, and there is little in the way of public information to inform people of this. I do foresee this as a source of real tension in the years to come.

Great analysis. The bolded part at the end worries me. There's no telling what the masses of people that failed to save will do/try-to-do to those of us that have. It will somehow get explained away as luck or privilege instead of hard work and sacrifice, and they will want a big piece of our homemade pie for themselves (for free of course).
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Papa Mustache on October 04, 2016, 08:37:09 AM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

No you're wrong.   If you make 1M gross in 10 years, after tax that's like say 750K.  You are telling me .65*750K=488K invested over a median of 5 years (10/2) is enough to amass 1M?  I don't think so.  Not to mention how ludicrous it is to expect most people to gross 1M in 10 years.  Come on people, let's get real!   

Even MMM himself and his wife didn't reach 1M in 10 years.

65k compounded at 7% is worth right around 1MM in 10 years.

also what country are you in that you pay 25% tax on all your income?

grossing IMM isnt hard with 2 engineers. we will hit it in 10 years quite easily

If that math didn't work, our plan would be screwed LOL! (Thankfully, it does, and we're right on schedule).

Hey, clue me in. I'm doing something wrong. When I throw the $65K into the Bankrate.com compound interest calculator I get $136K at the end of 10 years.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on October 04, 2016, 08:38:52 AM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

No you're wrong.   If you make 1M gross in 10 years, after tax that's like say 750K.  You are telling me .65*750K=488K invested over a median of 5 years (10/2) is enough to amass 1M?  I don't think so.  Not to mention how ludicrous it is to expect most people to gross 1M in 10 years.  Come on people, let's get real!   

Even MMM himself and his wife didn't reach 1M in 10 years.

65k compounded at 7% is worth right around 1MM in 10 years.

also what country are you in that you pay 25% tax on all your income?

grossing IMM isnt hard with 2 engineers. we will hit it in 10 years quite easily

If that math didn't work, our plan would be screwed LOL! (Thankfully, it does, and we're right on schedule).

Hey, clue me in. I'm doing something wrong. When I throw the $65K into the Bankrate.com compound interest calculator I get $136K at the end of 10 years.

its 65k invested annually and compounded at 7%. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Paul der Krake on October 04, 2016, 08:39:58 AM
65k per year, ever year over 10 years.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Papa Mustache on October 04, 2016, 09:25:35 AM
Yep, that's it. That's the problem with sneaking a glance at MMM during the work day. Can't ever really concentrate on it, just read quickly. Thanks...
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Guses on October 04, 2016, 11:25:14 AM
Ok I am not disagreeing with the fact that it is relatively easy to do better than the average. I even think it might be easier to do better than average now than for previous generations. But then I see this:


 If you want to earn $300,000 per year instead, nothing is stopping you. If that's not enough, and you want to earn $1 million per year instead, you can make that happen if you so choose. There is no limit in the USA.


HAHhahahahHAHAHAhahahaHAHAHAhahahaHAhahahahAHahahah Hahah HahahaAhaha AHAHahahahAhahah Ahahahahahahahah! When we are all making $1 million per year, can we all win at the Olympics too?

As you have likely realized by now, there is a deep chasm between each of wanting, doing and succeeding.

The salaried earning market is practically a zero-sum game. Whatever you earn, someone else does not.

Same goes for the ideas market. You can't invent something that already exists.

Luckily, income level is within your control. If your income level were determined by the roll of a die, you might have a point, but it's not. It's up to you. You, Jack, could be earning $250,000 per year within 5 years if that is something you want. I could give you specific instructions on how to achieve that (*). But I bet you wouldn't do it because it would involve a lot of hard work and would completely uproot your life. It really comes down to choices.

Counter points:
First example: Cathy is born as a Native American in 1766. How does Cathy become a millionaire?

Second example: Cathy's parents think that education is worthless and don't send her to school. They are also poor. How does Cathy become a millionaire?

Third example: Cathy develops cancer and has to undergo life altering chemo that stops her from working. How does Cathy become a millionaire?

The common denominator is that circumstances matter.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Paul der Krake on October 04, 2016, 11:35:26 AM
The salaried earning market is practically a zero-sum game. Whatever you earn, someone else does not.

Same goes for the ideas market. You can't invent something that already exists.
Those are extraordinary claims.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Guses on October 04, 2016, 11:40:07 AM
The salaried earning market is practically a zero-sum game. Whatever you earn, someone else does not.

Same goes for the ideas market. You can't invent something that already exists.
Those are extraordinary claims.

What I mean is that if you earn a salary, someone else is not earning it. Fact, when companies outsource positions to India, the people whose jobs are outsourced lose said jobs. Besides, I said practically. There exists some jobs where you create value.

I don't know how you can disagree with the second paragraph. Maybe you have a time traveling machine?

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on October 04, 2016, 11:42:53 AM
The salaried earning market is practically a zero-sum game. Whatever you earn, someone else does not.

Same goes for the ideas market. You can't invent something that already exists.
Those are extraordinary claims.

those were likely said in hyperbole.  but the whole claim of i've got it rough i cant earn more isnt really true you can earn as much as you like in our country ... you just have to be willing to do whatever it is or figure out how to do it. i have to work to the ripe old age of 47 for my investments to pay me 300k a year.  so its not that much of a hyperbole. ... and if i work til 50 i will be increasing my networth at around 1MM per year ... effectively "earning" 1MM dollars thru salary and earnings on investments ... doesnt seem too outlandish to me to get to either of those figures.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: ender on October 04, 2016, 11:46:40 AM
The salaried earning market is practically a zero-sum game. Whatever you earn, someone else does not.

Same goes for the ideas market. You can't invent something that already exists.
Those are extraordinary claims.

What I mean is that if you earn a salary, someone else is not earning it. Fact, when companies outsource positions to India, the people whose jobs are outsourced lose said jobs. Besides, I said practically. There exists some jobs where you create value.

I don't know how you can disagree with the second paragraph. Maybe you have a time traveling machine?

This is a common fallacy.

The fallacy is wealth creation is effectively a zero sum game. If someone creates wealth in one area, then someone else is losing wealth elsewhere. This is not true.

You only need to look at any number of metrics (real GDP/capita is a decent one) to see this is not true.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Guses on October 04, 2016, 11:55:08 AM
The salaried earning market is practically a zero-sum game. Whatever you earn, someone else does not.

Same goes for the ideas market. You can't invent something that already exists.
Those are extraordinary claims.

What I mean is that if you earn a salary, someone else is not earning it. Fact, when companies outsource positions to India, the people whose jobs are outsourced lose said jobs. Besides, I said practically. There exists some jobs where you create value.

I don't know how you can disagree with the second paragraph. Maybe you have a time traveling machine?

This is a common fallacy.

The fallacy is wealth creation is effectively a zero sum game. If someone creates wealth in one area, then someone else is losing wealth elsewhere. This is not true.

You only need to look at any number of metrics (real GDP/capita is a decent one) to see this is not true.

Maybe I should have refrained from using zero-sum as I did not mean to comment on wealth/gdp. I was commenting on the number and quality of jobs from the perspective of the individual.

If two people apply for a job, only one person can get it. If one person leaves a position, it creates a vacancy to be filled.

The total number of positions/jobs can increase or decrease but, at any given moment it is a set number.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on October 04, 2016, 11:57:07 AM
The salaried earning market is practically a zero-sum game. Whatever you earn, someone else does not.

Same goes for the ideas market. You can't invent something that already exists.
Those are extraordinary claims.

What I mean is that if you earn a salary, someone else is not earning it. Fact, when companies outsource positions to India, the people whose jobs are outsourced lose said jobs. Besides, I said practically. There exists some jobs where you create value.

I don't know how you can disagree with the second paragraph. Maybe you have a time traveling machine?

This is a common fallacy.

The fallacy is wealth creation is effectively a zero sum game. If someone creates wealth in one area, then someone else is losing wealth elsewhere. This is not true.

You only need to look at any number of metrics (real GDP/capita is a decent one) to see this is not true.

Maybe I should have refrained from using zero-sum as I did not mean to comment on wealth/gdp. I was commenting on the number and quality of jobs from the perspective of the individual.

If two people apply for a job, only one person can get it. If one person leaves a position, it creates a vacancy to be filled.

The total number of positions/jobs can increase or decrease but, at any given moment it is a set number.

you have to put on your thinking cap and move outside of the box of traditional salaried income jobs to get to the point of 300k or 1MM in income. - which doesnt have to be from one stream of income either.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: ender on October 04, 2016, 12:02:48 PM
Maybe I should have refrained from using zero-sum as I did not mean to comment on wealth/gdp. I was commenting on the number and quality of jobs from the perspective of the individual.

If two people apply for a job, only one person can get it. If one person leaves a position, it creates a vacancy to be filled.

The total number of positions/jobs can increase or decrease but, at any given moment it is a set number.

... so? Obviously at a given snapshot the number is constant.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: bacchi on October 04, 2016, 12:14:46 PM
you have to put on your thinking cap and move outside of the box of traditional salaried income jobs to get to the point of 300k or 1MM in income. - which doesnt have to be from one stream of income either.

We can all start ER and travel blogs!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Guses on October 04, 2016, 12:20:42 PM
Maybe I should have refrained from using zero-sum as I did not mean to comment on wealth/gdp. I was commenting on the number and quality of jobs from the perspective of the individual.

If two people apply for a job, only one person can get it. If one person leaves a position, it creates a vacancy to be filled.

The total number of positions/jobs can increase or decrease but, at any given moment it is a set number.

... so? Obviously at a given snapshot the number is constant.

Yeah and that's my point. If the number is constant, you can't simply pluck a salaried 300,000$/year position out of thin air. You have to displace someone to get it. Not as simple as willing it to be.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 04, 2016, 12:21:13 PM
It's hard to amass wealth when you miss the boom times of the 90s because you were too young, then start working after 9/11. Though if you were able to ride out the last recession, you could be just fine. I wasn't.

I was born in '81.  Missed the boom times of the 90s, and started working after 9/11.  No problems with wealth here.  That said, I was just starting to invest during 2007 - 2008, so benefited from the drop and rebound.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MishMash on October 04, 2016, 12:22:55 PM
only takes a 65% savings rate to reach 1MM in 10 years.  at 7% interest.  on a 100k income.

You do realize how much of an outlier even reaching a $100k income by age 34 is, let alone having $100k every year for the 10 preceding years (or a salary progression that would allow similar wealth accumulation), right?

life has been a cake walk ... smart parents who were boomers who taught me how to save alot ... then found this site and my dad is crazy impressed with how this is all possible.

i'm not a come from nothing to something but my parents were.  i'm not gonna say i didnt have it way easier than some i probably did

Even with that attempt at acknowledging your advantage, you are way, way underestimating it.

Jack, DH and I both reached 100k income within 4 years of graduation.  We've also socked away 100k plus per year for many years now.  It's about college major choices, mobility and willingness to move around for income mainly.  At 34 currently almost everyone I am friends with earns 6 figures except the teachers and liberal arts majors.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on October 04, 2016, 12:27:16 PM
It's hard to amass wealth when you miss the boom times of the 90s because you were too young, then start working after 9/11. Though if you were able to ride out the last recession, you could be just fine. I wasn't.

I was born in '81.  Missed the boom times of the 90s, and started working after 9/11.  No problems with wealth here.  That said, I was just starting to invest during 2007 - 2008, so benefited from the drop and rebound.

With all this chatter about how long it takes to become a millionaire and whether having a six-figure income is "hard" or not we're all missing the point of the OP. 
Current NW is roughly $35k for people in their mid-thirties (article quotes £27k).  That's horribly low... the equivelent of investing just $200/month for 10 years.  If you did nothing more than max out your IRA each year starting at age 22 you'll be 3-4x wealthier than the average of your peers.

We don't have a wealth problem - we have a spending problem.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Guses on October 04, 2016, 12:31:37 PM
you have to put on your thinking cap and move outside of the box of traditional salaried income jobs to get to the point of 300k or 1MM in income. - which doesnt have to be from one stream of income either.

I am not saying it can't be done. I am saying that the majority will never achieve it. In fact, 97% of households in USA will never achieve 300,000$ per year income.

You can't think cap your way out of cold hard facts.

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 04, 2016, 12:33:12 PM
almost everyone I am friends with

Well that's the key now, isn't it? I'm going to guess that your friends are not a representative sample of all people in their 30s, including the ones who don't have college educations to begin with. You, boarder42 and others keep talking about your (exceptional) experience and then trying to extrapolate (https://www.xkcd.com/605/) it to the entire population, and it simply doesn't work that way!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 04, 2016, 12:33:53 PM
you have to put on your thinking cap and move outside of the box of traditional salaried income jobs to get to the point of 300k or 1MM in income. - which doesnt have to be from one stream of income either.

I am not saying it can't be done. I am saying that the majority will never achieve it. In fact, 97% of households in USA will never achieve 300,000$ per year income.

You can't think cap your way out of cold hard facts.

I expect to retire without ever achieving a six figure salary.  It shouldn't prevent me from retiring comfortably at 40.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Guses on October 04, 2016, 12:35:22 PM
almost everyone I am friends with

Well that's the key now, isn't it? I'm going to guess that your friends are not a representative sample of all people in their 30s, including the ones who don't have college educations to begin with. You, boarder42 and others keep talking about your (exceptional) experience and then trying to extrapolate (https://www.xkcd.com/605/) it to the entire population, and it simply doesn't work that way!

Survivors' bias.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on October 04, 2016, 12:39:18 PM
you have to put on your thinking cap and move outside of the box of traditional salaried income jobs to get to the point of 300k or 1MM in income. - which doesnt have to be from one stream of income either.

I am not saying it can't be done. I am saying that the majority will never achieve it. In fact, 97% of households in USA will never achieve 300,000$ per year income.

You can't think cap your way out of cold hard facts.

97% of households spend far too much money and dont save ... if that was their GOAL they could infact acheive it.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MishMash on October 04, 2016, 12:42:22 PM
almost everyone I am friends with

Well that's the key now, isn't it? I'm going to guess that your friends are not a representative sample of all people in their 30s, including the ones who don't have college educations to begin with. You, boarder42 and others keep talking about your (exceptional) experience and then trying to extrapolate (https://www.xkcd.com/605/) it to the entire population, and it simply doesn't work that way!

Well I would say that it's a pretty fair mix of gender, race, immigrant/non status, and majors.  Not many without a college degree because lets face it, college degrees, or trade schools degrees are pretty much a requirement for jobs nowadays.  That said, no one in my family outside of myself has a degree, and they are just fine.  Common theme is that those of us that are all well paid are largely STEM, or small business owners. 

The point people are trying to make is that our experiences aren't really all that extraordinary, especially for these boards.  You seem to think it's a one in a million chance.  It's not, people do it every day.  Do I think that high school drop out Joe could achieve the same thing, no, but again, a very large part of success, and failure, is due to personal choices.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 04, 2016, 12:47:04 PM
97% of households spend far too much money and dont save ... if that was their GOAL they could infact acheive it.

Maybe, but what the hell does that have to do with achieving a 300K income?  Or having $1M by age 32?   You can be a great saver, but still not reach these benchmarks.   
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 04, 2016, 12:49:20 PM
It's about college major choices, mobility and willingness to move around for income mainly.  At 34 currently almost everyone I am friends with earns 6 figures except the teachers and liberal arts majors.

Have you talked to the average American?   Avg American is an idiot!  How the hell is he/she supposed to get through a major like math, finance, engineering, etc?  That's the most common path to getting to $100K by age 30.   This is not even mentioning other factors. 

I think some of you guys live in a bubble.  What appears to be easy to me and you is not so easy for most other people.         
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 04, 2016, 01:00:51 PM
I work with and manage alot of millennials (as most people do). I see several problems leading to their lower net worth. I think marketing has done it's job with younger folks, and they buy into more things than previous generations. Younger folks in general, aren't buying houses like we did, they are missing out on the forced savings. Peer pressure is greater than ever, to keep up with their social circle. They tend to job hop more than older generations. It seems if they aren't promoted in six months, they hop to another job, starting at the bottom again; they tend not to have patience to stick with a company, and work their way up. This isn't a bash, it's just things I've noticed.

Data doesn't support that assuming you meant "buy more things".  Their savings rates are better than GenX's and late Bloomers' were at similar ages. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 04, 2016, 01:23:02 PM
Well I would say that it's a pretty fair mix of gender, race, immigrant/non status, and majors.  Not many without a college degree because lets face it, college degrees, or trade schools degrees are pretty much a requirement for jobs nowadays.  That said, no one in my family outside of myself has a degree, and they are just fine.  Common theme is that those of us that are all well paid are largely STEM, or small business owners. 

The point people are trying to make is that our experiences aren't really all that extraordinary, especially for these boards.  You seem to think it's a one in a million chance.

There are 204 million (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S) working-age people in the US. 2.5 million of them are engineers (http://www.numberof.net/number-of-engineers-in-the-usa/). (I'd like to find a statistic for the total number of STEM jobs, but could only find ones about job openings, which isn't the same thing. Let's arbitrarily multiply by 10 and assume 25 million STEM jobs total.) There are 28 million small businesses (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/09/09/16-surprising-statistics-about-small-businesses/#203508813078) (and I will assume for the purpose of this calculation that each as one unique owner). Assuming that there is no overlap between holders of STEM jobs and business owners, at best it's a (25 + 28) / 204 = 26% chance. (That sounds like a gross overestimate to me, but let's go with it.)

So no, I don't think it's a "one in a million chance." For the purpose of this discussion, I think it's roughly a 26 out of 100 chance.

But that still leaves the other 74%, who aren't STEM workers and aren't business owners. Instead, many of them are working shitty, low-paying customer service jobs at places like Wal-Mart and McDonalds -- or worse, they're unemployed or even incarcerated. Maybe they picked a stupid major in college. Maybe they never went to college at all. Maybe they dropped out of high school, let alone college!

The point is, any statement about people in their 30s as a whole has to include them too!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Guses on October 04, 2016, 01:49:59 PM
you have to put on your thinking cap and move outside of the box of traditional salaried income jobs to get to the point of 300k or 1MM in income. - which doesnt have to be from one stream of income either.

I am not saying it can't be done. I am saying that the majority will never achieve it. In fact, 97% of households in USA will never achieve 300,000$ per year income.

You can't think cap your way out of cold hard facts.

97% of households spend far too much money and dont save ... if that was their GOAL they could infact acheive it.

If 97% of households spend too much money, would it not be in their best interest to try to get better paying jobs so that they can... spend even more (or, wishful thinking, save more)?

Newsflash; everybody wants more money. If you want to be in the 3%, you have to be better than the 97%. By definition, not everyone can do it. QED.

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MishMash on October 04, 2016, 03:10:29 PM
It's about college major choices, mobility and willingness to move around for income mainly.  At 34 currently almost everyone I am friends with earns 6 figures except the teachers and liberal arts majors.

Have you talked to the average American?   Avg American is an idiot!  How the hell is he/she supposed to get through a major like math, finance, engineering, etc?  That's the most common path to getting to $100K by age 30.   This is not even mentioning other factors. 

I think some of you guys live in a bubble.  What appears to be easy to me and you is not so easy for most other people.         

And again personal choices.  Yes the average American is an idiot, but you know whose fault that is, that individuals (barring of course those with disabilities and probably below poverty level individuals).  With the Internet nowadays, and free classes on everything from how to fix your car to your house to free lessons in programming it is their personal choice to remain an idiot.  Libraries are free, and provide free internet, and most schools have both of those things.  Learn something that someone else wants and teach yourself ways to make it better.

You don't like working in McDonalds, you don't like being a cashier in Walmart...do something about it instead of whine that it's not fair or not average.  The US by and large, has a consumeristic spending problem, NOT a lack of opportunity problem especially for those in the middle class.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 04, 2016, 03:28:02 PM
And again personal choices.  Yes the average American is an idiot, but you know whose fault that is, that individuals (barring of course those with disabilities and probably below poverty level individuals).

So you think the quality of a person's parents is his choice?!

You don't like working in McDonalds, you don't like being a cashier in Walmart...do something about it instead of whine that it's not fair or not average.

How about this thought experiment: assume every worker at McDonalds, Wal-mart, and every other low-paying job decides to "do something about it" and get an engineering degree. What will happen?

The answer is, people with engineering degrees would end up working at fucking McDonalds and Wal-Mart!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MishMash on October 04, 2016, 04:00:33 PM
And again personal choices.  Yes the average American is an idiot, but you know whose fault that is, that individuals (barring of course those with disabilities and probably below poverty level individuals).

So you think the quality of a person's parents is his choice?!

You don't like working in McDonalds, you don't like being a cashier in Walmart...do something about it instead of whine that it's not fair or not average.

How about this thought experiment: assume every worker at McDonalds, Wal-mart, and every other low-paying job decides to "do something about it" and get an engineering degree. What will happen?

The answer is, people with engineering degrees would end up working at fucking McDonalds and Wal-Mart!

A person can overcome their parents, mine were uneducated, on assistance several times in their life, and my mother to this day, I love her, but she still blames all her problems on someone other then herself.  She's still just getting by, and her dreams "never came true"because of X, Y or Z.  She doesn't see it's because she's only held a full time job for 3 total years of her life (she's 70), or that they had more kids then they could probably afford (which yes I was one of them so there's that), or that they insisted on "new" cars every 5 years or as soon as something mechanical went wrong or that they had no issue pulling 401k loans to go on vacation.

The people with the engineering degrees might go work at McDonalds, but, by then without ANY workers, McDonalds/Walmart would probably be paying more then the engineering jobs due to lack of employees.  But, I'd be more willing to bet that the above average engineer on this board would see the writing on the wall and transition careers, perhaps to earning a large salary tutoring those McDonalds workers to become engineers.  All online, from the comfort of their home, in a comfy early retirement.

The fact is, it's an early retirement board, the people on here are by and large NOT your 'average' American.  Some of us once were, but we've all decided, consciously, to buck the consumeristic trend, and make cautious personal choices with the solid goal of bettering our lives and our financial positions.  ER is not for everyone, nor is the ability to become a 30 year old millionaire (extreme poverty,disabilities etc), but it's within the grasp of A LOT more people then there currently taking advantage of the opportunities in their lives.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 04, 2016, 04:13:02 PM
The fact is, it's an early retirement board, the people on here are by and large NOT your 'average' American.

The board may not be about "average" people, but the article being discussed (http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37508968) in this topic was!

The point is, this myopic Lake Wobegone perspective that disregards structural problems in society just because in theory any individual might be capable of overcoming them (despite the fact that it is not possible for more than a small fraction of the group to do so) is... unhelpful at best.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MishMash on October 04, 2016, 04:20:48 PM
The fact is, it's an early retirement board, the people on here are by and large NOT your 'average' American.

The board may not be about "average" people, but the article being discussed (http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37508968) in this topic was!

The point is, this myopic Lake Wobegone perspective that disregards structural problems in society just because in theory any individual might be capable of overcoming them (despite the fact that it is not possible for more than a small fraction of the group to do so) is... unhelpful at best.

According to your own math, it's not "small fraction" that overcome those supposed structural problems, it's 26% or over a quarter of the population.  That alone would indicate that it's more of a "don't wanna make the effort/spend too much" problem vs inherent structural problems that we can blame on the government.  Imagine if another 24% of people actually decided to make an effort to get a better education or technical training, increase income, budget, save, and invest.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MrRealEstate on October 05, 2016, 01:42:34 AM


You don't like working in McDonalds, you don't like being a cashier in Walmart...do something about it instead of whine that it's not fair or not average.

How about this thought experiment: assume every worker at McDonalds, Wal-mart, and every other low-paying job decides to "do something about it" and get an engineering degree. What will happen?

The answer is, people with engineering degrees would end up working at fucking McDonalds and Wal-Mart!

These people may begin working at McDonalds, but do you think they'd have the same job as the people making minimum wage? Or would McDonalds decide to leverage these surplus engineers into a much more lucrative competitive advantage? 

if a civilization has a glut of educated workers would the economy begin accelerating at a faster pace since we then have more people to address more problems, or simply inefficiencies?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Schaefer Light on October 05, 2016, 08:27:24 AM
It's hard to amass wealth when you miss the boom times of the 90s because you were too young, then start working after 9/11. Though if you were able to ride out the last recession, you could be just fine. I wasn't.

I was born in '81.  Missed the boom times of the 90s, and started working after 9/11.  No problems with wealth here.  That said, I was just starting to invest during 2007 - 2008, so benefited from the drop and rebound.

With all this chatter about how long it takes to become a millionaire and whether having a six-figure income is "hard" or not we're all missing the point of the OP. 
Current NW is roughly $35k for people in their mid-thirties (article quotes £27k).  That's horribly low... the equivelent of investing just $200/month for 10 years.  If you did nothing more than max out your IRA each year starting at age 22 you'll be 3-4x wealthier than the average of your peers.

We don't have a wealth problem - we have a spending problem.
Most people would rather buy a new car or go on a big vacation than fully fund their retirement accounts, though.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Papa Mustache on October 05, 2016, 08:29:42 AM
Have you talked to the average American?   Avg American is an idiot!  How the hell is he/she supposed to get through a major like math, finance, engineering, etc?  That's the most common path to getting to $100K by age 30.   This is not even mentioning other factors. 

I think some of you guys live in a bubble.  What appears to be easy to me and you is not so easy for most other people.         

I've got to admit that the recent political cycle has given DW and I the opportunity to hear the unsolicited opinions of many different kinds of people. You may have a point...

Each presidential election leads to an exposure to even more outspoken and uninformed people than the last one. I can only imagine what the 2020 election will be like... ;)
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 05, 2016, 08:38:56 AM
You don't like working in McDonalds, you don't like being a cashier in Walmart...do something about it instead of whine that it's not fair or not average.

How about this thought experiment: assume every worker at McDonalds, Wal-mart, and every other low-paying job decides to "do something about it" and get an engineering degree. What will happen?

The answer is, people with engineering degrees would end up working at fucking McDonalds and Wal-Mart!

These people may begin working at McDonalds, but do you think they'd have the same job as the people making minimum wage? Or would McDonalds decide to leverage these surplus engineers into a much more lucrative competitive advantage? 

if a civilization has a glut of educated workers would the economy begin accelerating at a faster pace since we then have more people to address more problems, or simply inefficiencies?

The economy needs workers to fill the jobs that exist now. There aren't enough engineering jobs for everyone to be an engineer. Maybe if everybody had the skills the number of engineering jobs would increase -- slowly over time -- to leverage them, but otherwise the vast majority would be still be stuck underemployed in manual labor / customer service roles.

Besides, at this point we're talking about some sort of irrelevant futurist utopia anyway -- "what if everybody became engineers" simply isn't going to happen because most people fundamentally aren't capable of it, no matter how motivated they are!



And that brings me back to the original topic of this thread: why are the current cohort of people in their 30s less wealthy now than the previous cohorts were? The recession is a big factor, but I also think it's because people (on average) have always been too damn stupid to manage their finances properly, and the difference now is that their employers and/or the government have decided to stop being responsible for doing it for them. In addition, the rise of the confusopoly (http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32382829), ever-more-effective advertising, and proliferation of choices has made it harder and harder for idiots (i.e., normal people) to figure out how to avoid wasting their money.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on October 05, 2016, 08:43:52 AM
With all this chatter about how long it takes to become a millionaire and whether having a six-figure income is "hard" or not we're all missing the point of the OP. 
Current NW is roughly $35k for people in their mid-thirties (article quotes £27k).  That's horribly low... the equivelent of investing just $200/month for 10 years.  If you did nothing more than max out your IRA each year starting at age 22 you'll be 3-4x wealthier than the average of your peers.

We don't have a wealth problem - we have a spending problem.
Most people would rather buy a new car or go on a big vacation than fully fund their retirement accounts, though.
Um... yeah.  That's literally my point. This downward trend in Net Worth of people in their 30s is the direct result of them taking big vacations or buying new cars instead of saving and investing. The supposed "struggles" of the middle class are directly tied to our expectations that we should have two new cars, a big vacation each year and the pleasure of eating a nice restaurants a few times every month.
We earn about the same as we did a decade ago, but we are spending more. It's not rocket-science, it's the hedonic treadmill.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on October 05, 2016, 08:44:48 AM
You don't like working in McDonalds, you don't like being a cashier in Walmart...do something about it instead of whine that it's not fair or not average.

How about this thought experiment: assume every worker at McDonalds, Wal-mart, and every other low-paying job decides to "do something about it" and get an engineering degree. What will happen?

The answer is, people with engineering degrees would end up working at fucking McDonalds and Wal-Mart!

These people may begin working at McDonalds, but do you think they'd have the same job as the people making minimum wage? Or would McDonalds decide to leverage these surplus engineers into a much more lucrative competitive advantage? 

if a civilization has a glut of educated workers would the economy begin accelerating at a faster pace since we then have more people to address more problems, or simply inefficiencies?

The economy needs workers to fill the jobs that exist now. There aren't enough engineering jobs for everyone to be an engineer. Maybe if everybody had the skills the number of engineering jobs would increase -- slowly over time -- to leverage them, but otherwise the vast majority would be still be stuck underemployed in manual labor / customer service roles.

Besides, at this point we're talking about some sort of irrelevant futurist utopia anyway -- "what if everybody became engineers" simply isn't going to happen because most people fundamentally aren't capable of it, no matter how motivated they are!



And that brings me back to the original topic of this thread: why are the current cohort of people in their 30s less wealthy now than the previous cohorts were? The recession is a big factor, but I also think it's because people (on average) have always been too damn stupid to manage their finances properly, and the difference now is that their employers and/or the government have decided to stop being responsible for doing it for them. In addition, the rise of the confusopoly (http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32382829), ever-more-effective advertising, and proliferation of choices has made it harder and harder for idiots (i.e., normal people) to figure out how to avoid wasting their money.

most people are capable of being electricians or plumbers or welders or any other trade labor.  10k hours. you may need better brain capacity to be an engineer but there are shortages of trade labor world wide.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 08:48:52 AM
And again personal choices.  Yes the average American is an idiot, but you know whose fault that is, that individuals (barring of course those with disabilities and probably below poverty level individuals).  With the Internet nowadays, and free classes on everything from how to fix your car to your house to free lessons in programming it is their personal choice to remain an idiot.  Libraries are free, and provide free internet, and most schools have both of those things.  Learn something that someone else wants and teach yourself ways to make it better.

You are under the delusion that with hard work anyone can figure anything out.   Programming?  I see you are an engineer:  Of course, for you it'll seem that it's not too difficult to figure that out on your own.   For most people, it's not easy or even achievable.  I've read that you either can figure programming out or you can't.    Also, knowing how to fix your car or house is admirable, but it is not going to get you to 100K by age 30 unless you are such an expert to open your own business fixing that stuff. 

I really think many people want to believe in the nonsense that with enough bootstrapping and hard work anyone can be rich so they can pat themselves on the back and also so they don't have to support programs to assist those less fortunate. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cromacster on October 05, 2016, 09:05:12 AM
And again personal choices.  Yes the average American is an idiot, but you know whose fault that is, that individuals (barring of course those with disabilities and probably below poverty level individuals).  With the Internet nowadays, and free classes on everything from how to fix your car to your house to free lessons in programming it is their personal choice to remain an idiot.  Libraries are free, and provide free internet, and most schools have both of those things.  Learn something that someone else wants and teach yourself ways to make it better.

You are under the delusion that with hard work anyone can figure anything out.   Programming?  I see you are an engineer:  Of course, for you it'll seem that it's not too difficult to figure that out on your own.   For most people, it's not easy or even achievable.  I've read that you either can figure programming out or you can't.    Also, knowing how to fix your car or house is admirable, but it is not going to get you to 100K by age 30 unless you are such an expert to open your own business fixing that stuff. 

I really think many people want to believe in the nonsense that with enough bootstrapping and hard work anyone can be rich so they can pat themselves on the back and also so they don't have to support programs to assist those less fortunate.

I don't think that's it at all.  I think it stems from when people bitch and whine about topics such as this they ask the question "well what have you done to better you situation other than bitch and whine"?

Knowledge has never been more free or available than right now.  If you want to learn to do something it only takes willingness and dedication.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on October 05, 2016, 09:14:29 AM
lets see 90% of americans aged 25-29 have a high school diploma.  here are the requirements to be an electrician apprentice:

 Qualifications:

Age requirement is a minimum of 18
Must have obtained a high school diploma or GED
Must have a way to and from work and class
Social Security Card and Valid Drivers License
Passed a background check and drug test
Upon acceptance, applicant must supply his own tools.**  Note: Take a look at the electrical tools that I carry. My Electrician Tool List! **
Cost and Tuition:

Note: Tuition is deducted from your pay each week.

$25 application fee
$50 registration fee upon acceptance
1st year – 1,000 hours of on the job training $0.37 per hour for each hour worked
1st year – Next 1,000 hours $0.41 cents per hour for each hour worked
2nd year – $0.49 cents per hour for each hour worked
3rd year – $0.56 cents per hour for each hour worked
4th year – $0.64 cents per hour for each hour worked

so you're telling me that of the 90% of people with HS diplomas they cant come up with:
1. a bicycle
2. probably 500-1k for tools
3. pass a drug/background test - (self inflicted not my problem)
4. $75 application fee

mean hourly wage for a journeyman is 25.44 per hour in 2010 so 28.10 today. 

so if you assume the mean by 30 you'd have to work 3300 hours a year to make 100k.  assuming all hours worked over 2088 annually are time and a half with no double time.  not ideal but also not impossible. 

the apprenticeship program is paid. so you're making money while you learn. 

we need more of them..

can all 90% of people with a GED do this and society still work well... no but alot of people claiming ITS TOO HARD to make that much money, just need to try harder.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on October 05, 2016, 09:20:29 AM
Luck12 what do you do for information purposes since you're so opposed to being able to bring in 100k per year, i'm more on the side 100k per year for a couple isnt hard but for whatever reason you keep taking this to individual.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cathy on October 05, 2016, 09:25:39 AM
If two people apply for a job, only one person can get it. If one person leaves a position, it creates a vacancy to be filled.

The total number of positions/jobs can increase or decrease but, at any given moment it is a set number.

Even if this is true (which it's not), how is it relevant to anything? Jack also points out the obvious truism above that not everybody can earn $300,000 per year, and I think this is just intended to be another way of rephrasing that. I've never disputed that fact, but it's totally irrelevant to everything I've posted in this thread. It's about as insightful as saying that the economy would be destroyed if everybody became frugal, because, even if true, it's just not going to happen. Most people will never put in the effort to earn $300,000 per year -- or even anything close to that -- so we don't need to worry about what would happen if everybody did attempt to.


First example: Cathy is born as a Native American in 1766. How does Cathy become a millionaire?

All of my comments in this thread, and everywhere else on the forum, are intended to apply to the circumstances of the present-day United States, unless otherwise indicated. I may not have explicitly stated this until now, but there were some pretty obvious hints that this was the case, such as speaking in the present tense when saying it is open to you to earn $300,000 if you want.

As for your attempts to personalise the thread, I'm going to have to decline to participate. There's really no winning with people who want to personalise topics like this. Even if somebody had to overcome every imaginable obstacle to get where they are, and is able to outline a moving story of overcoming adversity through hard work, you would just write it off as exceptional and learn nothing from it. Other people might learn from it, but you, Guses, certainly would not. Some people just don't want to hear about how they can improve their station in life.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 05, 2016, 09:28:12 AM
This downward trend in Net Worth of people in their 30s is the direct result of them taking big vacations or buying new cars instead of saving and investing. The supposed "struggles" of the middle class are directly tied to our expectations that we should have two new cars, a big vacation each year and the pleasure of eating a nice restaurants a few times every month.

Do 30-year-olds take more big vacations and buy more new cars now than previous generations did? Cite a study proving it, please, because I don't believe it's actually true!

Anecdotally, my parents (albeit baby-boomers, not gen-x) tell me stories about how, when they were my age, they vacationed in places like Cancun and such, and used to own cars like Ford Mustangs and Plymouth 'Cudas (bought new). In contrast, the closest I've come to a vacation is camping in the mountains, tagging along with my parents because they rent condos bigger than they need when they go to the beach, or visiting the in-laws. I literally don't think I've ever paid for a hotel room in my life! And I've certainly never bought myself anything close to a new muscle car.

I don't think that's it at all.  I think it stems from when people bitch and whine about topics such as this they ask the question "well what have you done to better you situation other than bitch and whine"?

can all 90% of people with a GED do this and society still work well... no but alot of people claiming ITS TOO HARD to make that much money, just need to try harder.

Luck12 what do you do for information purposes since you're so opposed to being able to bring in 100k per year, i'm more on the side 100k per year for a couple isnt hard but for whatever reason you keep taking this to individual.

Nobody in this thread -- neither Luck12 or anybody else -- has "bitched or whined" that they themselves can't make more money by working harder. Our point -- which is so obvious and true that even boarder42 just acknowledged it himself -- has only ever been that there exist, and always will exist, a large contingent of other people who genuinely can't: "can all 90% of people with a GED do this and society still work well... no."
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 05, 2016, 09:33:58 AM
Even if this is true (which it's not), how is it relevant to anything? Jack also points out the obvious truism above that not everybody can earn $300,000 per year, and I think this is just intended to be another way of rephrasing that. I've never disputed that fact, but it's totally irrelevant to everything I've posted in this thread. It's about as insightful as saying that the economy would be destroyed if everybody became frugal, because, even if true, it's just not going to happen. Most people will never put in the effort to earn $300,000 per year -- or even anything close to that -- so we don't need to worry about what would happen if everybody did attempt to.

How is the obvious truism that hard work leads to better outcomes for an individual relevant to the thread?! This thread isn't about individual behavior; it's about a structural difference in circumstances for an entire generational cohort! Human nature doesn't change -- one generation isn't going to be inherently "better" than another -- so something other than individual behavior must be the cause.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cathy on October 05, 2016, 09:38:49 AM
This thread isn't about individual behavior; it's about a structural difference in circumstances for an entire generational cohort!

Although I am sure there have been many generational differences over the years, it has not been demonstrated in this thread or elsewhere that these differences explain the alleged wealth decrease referenced in the news article linked to in the original post. In my first post in this thread (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/wealth-of-people-in-their-30s-has-'halved-in-a-decade'/msg1247919/#msg1247919), I took the position that there was no need to explain that alleged decrease because the two figures involved were the same to within rounding error. That's still my position on the original topic.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 09:38:49 AM
Luck12 what do you do for information purposes since you're so opposed to being able to bring in 100k per year, i'm more on the side 100k per year for a couple isnt hard but for whatever reason you keep taking this to individual.

Oh so you want to go there eh?  I make well over 100K and hit 100K by 30.  I agree 100K for a couple isn't that difficult, but it's my opinion the original 100K by age 30 and 1M by early 30's comments were meant to be applied on an individual basis.  Just my opinion, wasn't clear from that person's statement. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 09:42:04 AM
Knowledge has never been more free or available than right now.  If you want to learn to do something it only takes willingness and dedication.

So basically you and others who think like you are just going to double down on the "anything is possible with hard work" BS?   Yeah, I want to learn to play tennis like Federer, surely with enough "willingness and dedication" I can do that.   It's like you people don't understand that not everybody has the same potential. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MishMash on October 05, 2016, 09:48:49 AM
And again personal choices.  Yes the average American is an idiot, but you know whose fault that is, that individuals (barring of course those with disabilities and probably below poverty level individuals).  With the Internet nowadays, and free classes on everything from how to fix your car to your house to free lessons in programming it is their personal choice to remain an idiot.  Libraries are free, and provide free internet, and most schools have both of those things.  Learn something that someone else wants and teach yourself ways to make it better.

You are under the delusion that with hard work anyone can figure anything out.   Programming?  I see you are an engineer:  Of course, for you it'll seem that it's not too difficult to figure that out on your own.   For most people, it's not easy or even achievable.  I've read that you either can figure programming out or you can't.    Also, knowing how to fix your car or house is admirable, but it is not going to get you to 100K by age 30 unless you are such an expert to open your own business fixing that stuff. 

I really think many people want to believe in the nonsense that with enough bootstrapping and hard work anyone can be rich so they can pat themselves on the back and also so they don't have to support programs to assist those less fortunate.

Luck, I chose my major with one goal in mind.  What could pay back my student loans?  I had never even OWNED a computer and my entire knowledge of how to work one was basic word processing and pushing the power button in the school lab when I decided on engineering.  You seem to think the bulk of the population is just plain stupid.  Frankly I think they are more lazy then stupid.  I learned my field by working a crap ton of hours, having no college life, and seeking out every opportunity to learn.  There were others like me at the same time. 

I don't think the population is just plain IQ level stupid/idiots, I think people are lazy and don't want to put forth the actual effort it takes to learn or put forth the effort to make the hard choices to delay gratification to save.  There is no structural difference for our generation, jobs are like a river, they change course over time, if a person doesn't change and adapt to changes in technology, policy etc, they risk becoming the oxbow lake that gets left behind as the river continues to flow.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on October 05, 2016, 09:58:46 AM
This downward trend in Net Worth of people in their 30s is the direct result of them taking big vacations or buying new cars instead of saving and investing. The supposed "struggles" of the middle class are directly tied to our expectations that we should have two new cars, a big vacation each year and the pleasure of eating a nice restaurants a few times every month.

Do 30-year-olds take more big vacations and buy more new cars now than previous generations did? Cite a study proving it, please, because I don't believe it's actually true!


Well, there's a lot of evidence showing this is exactly the case.  I will use links vs embedding graphs or else this post will get very unweildly. 
For starters, household disposable income has been steadily increasing, both as a percentage and in absolute (real-adjusted) dollars. Using DPI strips out any differences with income taxes.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/4582126-3x2-940x627.jpg (http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/4582126-3x2-940x627.jpg)
http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/cjp-rbi-communities-blogs/wp-content/uploads/mt/icisweb/blogs/chemicals-and-the-economy/2012/02/06/US%20incomes%20Feb12.png (http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/cjp-rbi-communities-blogs/wp-content/uploads/mt/icisweb/blogs/chemicals-and-the-economy/2012/02/06/US%20incomes%20Feb12.png)

So; we have more disposable income but (as per the topic of this thread) we have LESS in net worth.
My post used spending on cars, vacations and housing as examples of how we are spending more money now than before.  Certainly there are other sources, but since these make up the majority of the average person's budget, let's focus on those.

Are we spending more on cars?  Yes!  One metric is to look at total car loans.  It's not perfect because it doesn't include cars that are paid off, but it shows a disturbing trend.  Since 2003 total US car loans have gone from $630B to $1.1T.  That's a 78% increase in just over a decade.
This, curiously, despite an upward trend in how long cars are staying on the road each year (http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/cars1.jpg), going from 9 years to 11.4 years in the same time frame.

Are we spending more on homes? 
First, in real-adjusted terms the cost per square foot of new-construction homes (http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/houses2.jpg) has remained stable over hte last 40 years, hovering between $100 and 120/sqft (in 2013 terms).
However, we keep buying bigger and bigger homes.  Median house size has increased from 2100 to 2500 sqft (https://www.google.ca/search?q=cost+of+cars+is+going+down&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjvtKWzgMTPAhWI7CYKHVJZAOgQ_AUICigD&biw=1252&bih=730#tbm=isch&q=US+new+construction+homes+square+footage&imgrc=PaEJQlKrJ5BA2M%3A) in the same time period, even while the number of people in the household has steadily declined.
It's also worth noting that we have more mortgage debt now than we did 10 years ago, whether you measure it as a function of total GDP (http://breakfree.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/US-GDP-vs-Total-Mortgage-Debt.png) or relative to disposable income (https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/household-debt-to-disposable-income-ratio-canada-us_chartbuilder.png?w=1024&h=576) (the latter looks much closer, but remember we have more disposable income than before).

So are we spending more on vacations?  Here I will admit the data does not seem to support my accusation; US citizens seem to be taking fewer (http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/images/travel-figure1.png) and spending slightly less on both domestic and foreign vacations than they were a decade ago.  Maybe because we're already spending so 78% more on our cars and 15% more on our homes...
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cathy on October 05, 2016, 10:01:20 AM
Luck, I [made my choices] with one goal in mind.  What could [earn lots of money]?

Generalising your point a bit, I think you've hit on a major chasm that separates the complainers from the others.

I've been reading this forum for years, and one thing I've observed is that most people take into account a wide variety of extra-financial factors when making major life decisions. They evaluate axes like "will I enjoy it?", "how will it affect my social life?", "will it be a big change from what I'm used to?", and "what will my 'qualify of life' be like?" (to paraphrase Jack). I'm not saying there's anything wrong with evaluating those parameters, but you aren't going to get the same outcome as somebody who considers the singular objective of "What will allow me to retire by 30 as a millionaire?". I see very few people on this forum who truly have had that singular objective for their entire life and have governed their choices accordingly, or at all. Again, that's fine, but it's not surprising if somebody isn't able to retire by 30 when it was never the focal point of all of their decisions. That's the "self-discipline" that I referred to in my first post in this thread.


I agree 100K for a couple isn't that difficult, but it's my opinion the original 100K by age 30 and 1M by early 30's comments were meant to be applied on an individual basis.  Just my opinion, wasn't clear from that person's statement. 

I never specifically mentioned "100k by age 30". On the contrary, I've repeatedly pointed out that there is nothing mystical (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/can-you-be-a-mustachian-in-silicon-valley/msg969887/#msg969887) about an income of $100,000 per year, which is why I typically pick other numbers when I need an arbitrary salary to use for some purpose (to avoid propagating the air of mystery around the specific figure of $100,000).

As I've pointed out in too many past posts to list (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/the-massive-incomewealth-gap-of-married-vs-non-married/msg1245729/#msg1245729), although it's certainly possible to retire by 30 or earlier as a single person, it's far easier with a partner or partners.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 10:05:17 AM
Nereo, you never provided any evidence that those in their 30's now have lower savings rates than those in their 40's 50's did at similar ages.  All of your "evidence" is for all ages combined.   I'm the only one that has done that in this thread and clearly there's no evidence of this, at least in the U.S. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on October 05, 2016, 10:09:24 AM
Nereo, you never provided any evidence that those in their 30's now have lower savings rates than those in their 40's 50's did at similar ages.  All of your "evidence" is for all ages combined.   I'm the only one that has done that in this thread and clearly there's no evidence of this, at least in the U.S.
I showed the disposable income has increased.  Ipso facto, savings has decreased if net-worth has decreased. 
Just because evidence hasn't been presented or isn't available isn't proof that it doesn't exist.  OR (in dorky scientific terms)- failure to reject the null hypothesis isn't confirmation.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 10:13:20 AM
I see very few people on this forum who truly have had that singular objective for their entire life and have governed their choices accordingly, or at all. Again, that's fine, but it's not surprising if somebody isn't able to retire by 30 when it was never the focal point of all of their decisions. That's the "self-discipline" that I referred to in my first post in this thread.

I did pick my major with a large focus on how it would affect retiring by 40 (I picked 40 just to be conservative because I graduated when the P/E ratio was very high).  Still, there's no way I would've been able to get through my major with a decent GPA and enter my career without a very high level of math aptitude.   Not to brag, but I certainly didn't have to work very hard, I've always been great at math.  Combine that with great parenting and magnet schooling and academic/career life was a cakewalk.   

Similarly, I've never had to be financially disciplined.  I remember from an early age I've always been a cheap bastard.   




Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cromacster on October 05, 2016, 10:13:34 AM
Knowledge has never been more free or available than right now.  If you want to learn to do something it only takes willingness and dedication.

So basically you and others who think like you are just going to double down on the "anything is possible with hard work" BS?   Yeah, I want to learn to play tennis like Federer, surely with enough "willingness and dedication" I can do that.   It's like you people don't understand that not everybody has the same potential.

Well that's a little extreme.  I never said you would be Roger Federer, that's ridiculous.  If you practice, studied the sport and got in shape you could be better than the average tennis player in your local area.  Just like I practice and train in weightlifting. I'm probably stronger that 80-90% of people in those lifts, but there's no way in hell I'm ever going to the Olympics. 

Change this discussion to X career or skill.  Being better than average is what sets you apart.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 10:14:55 AM
I showed the disposable income has increased.  Ipso facto, savings has decreased if net-worth has decreased. 
Just because evidence hasn't been presented or isn't available isn't proof that it doesn't exist.  OR (in dorky scientific terms)- failure to reject the null hypothesis isn't confirmation.

No comment on the link I posted on savings rates over the last 25 years+ by age group several days ago? 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: StarBright on October 05, 2016, 10:17:32 AM
This downward trend in Net Worth of people in their 30s is the direct result of them taking big vacations or buying new cars instead of saving and investing. The supposed "struggles" of the middle class are directly tied to our expectations that we should have two new cars, a big vacation each year and the pleasure of eating a nice restaurants a few times every month.

Do 30-year-olds take more big vacations and buy more new cars now than previous generations did? Cite a study proving it, please, because I don't believe it's actually true!

Anecdotally, my parents (albeit baby-boomers, not gen-x) tell me stories about how, when they were my age, they vacationed in places like Cancun and such, and used to own cars like Ford Mustangs and Plymouth 'Cudas (bought new). In contrast, the closest I've come to a vacation is camping in the mountains, tagging along with my parents because they rent condos bigger than they need when they go to the beach, or visiting the in-laws. I literally don't think I've ever paid for a hotel room in my life! And I've certainly never bought myself anything close to a new muscle car.


Jack, my experience lines up with yours (I know very few millennials taking vacations - mostly because they have little to no vacation time) but I found some interesting numbers:

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/infographic-how-your-generation-influences-way-you-travel-165070

The big issue with this data to me is that it doesn't ask how many trips people take a year, just the average value of the trip. For instance my little family takes an actual "vacation" - (ie not visiting our parents) every few years. Because we taken them infrequently we definitely spend a little more. Our parents (all boomers) take 5-8 trips a year. They definitely spend less than us on an individual vacation but they take an average of 15 trips to our 1.

But apparently millennials do take more trips to Europe. Anyway- just adding data points.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 10:18:05 AM
Well that's a little extreme.  I never said you would be Roger Federer, that's ridiculous.  If you practice, studied the sport and got in shape you could be better than the average tennis player in your local area.  Just like I practice and train in weightlifting. I'm probably stronger that 80-90% of people in those lifts, but there's no way in hell I'm ever going to the Olympics. 

Being better than average in math and science isn't going to cut it though (mostly) to become an actuary, engineer, doctor, etc and that's going to be even more the case going forward. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cathy on October 05, 2016, 10:28:28 AM
... I certainly didn't have to work very hard, I've always been great at math.  Combine that with great parenting and magnet schooling and academic/career life was a cakewalk. ...


If your point is that different people will experience different levels of difficulty in reaching success even if they make all the optimal choices, I agree. I don't think I've suggested otherwise. You may have had an easy time, but not everybody does. I don't think this affects my points in this thread. Everything I said took this into account already.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MishMash on October 05, 2016, 10:41:23 AM
I see very few people on this forum who truly have had that singular objective for their entire life and have governed their choices accordingly, or at all. Again, that's fine, but it's not surprising if somebody isn't able to retire by 30 when it was never the focal point of all of their decisions. That's the "self-discipline" that I referred to in my first post in this thread.

I did pick my major with a large focus on how it would affect retiring by 40 (I picked 40 just to be conservative because I graduated when the P/E ratio was very high).  Still, there's no way I would've been able to get through my major with a decent GPA and enter my career without a very high level of math aptitude.   Not to brag, but I certainly didn't have to work very hard, I've always been great at math.  Combine that with great parenting and magnet schooling and academic/career life was a cakewalk.   

Similarly, I've never had to be financially disciplined.  I remember from an early age I've always been a cheap bastard.   


Sooooo what you are saying is that you have ZERO experience with the actual ability to bootstrap yourself up in the world, yet claim that it's not possible or next to impossible for someone to do just that? 

I am the freaking poster child for bootstrapping, crappy family life, poor financial role models, crushing student debt, experience in getting a job at the height of the recession etc.  I am standing here as a very well off early 30's woman with a six figure salary telling you that it IS possible if you don't suffer from a disibility or extreme bone crushing poverty.  Yet apparently I am the "exception". 

No luck, on this planet your overly pleasant and perfect upbringing is the exception.  People bootstrap themselves up every. damn. day.  There are no inherent problems in society that prevent success there is only an unwillingness to make difficult decisions to get there.  People are more concerned with looking cool, or being in on the latest trend, or having the perfect FaceBook life then they are with creating a solid financial future for their family.  There are two entire threads on this board of people spending gobs of cash on stupid crap, and they go on for paaaages.  That is the norm in this society, we aren't at a lower net worth due to structural problems, we are there because people can't stop buying fucking ugly ass leggings and 300 dollar a bottle skin care and McMansions and 50k cars.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 05, 2016, 11:38:20 AM
Sooooo what you are saying is that you have ZERO experience with the actual ability to bootstrap yourself up in the world, yet claim that it's not possible or next to impossible for someone to do just that? 

I am the freaking poster child for bootstrapping, crappy family life, poor financial role models, crushing student debt, experience in getting a job at the height of the recession etc.  I am standing here as a very well off early 30's woman with a six figure salary telling you that it IS possible if you don't suffer from a disibility or extreme bone crushing poverty.  Yet apparently I am the "exception". 

No luck, on this planet your overly pleasant and perfect upbringing is the exception.  People bootstrap themselves up every. damn. day.  There are no inherent problems in society that prevent success there is only an unwillingness to make difficult decisions to get there.  People are more concerned with looking cool, or being in on the latest trend, or having the perfect FaceBook life then they are with creating a solid financial future for their family.  There are two entire threads on this board of people spending gobs of cash on stupid crap, and they go on for paaaages.  That is the norm in this society, we aren't at a lower net worth due to structural problems, we are there because people can't stop buying fucking ugly ass leggings and 300 dollar a bottle skin care and McMansions and 50k cars.

Repeating the same fallacious argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization) does not and will not stop it from being fallacious. First, Luck12's admission that he himself has not had to pull himself up by his boostraps is not equivalent to a claim that nobody can do it, so stop pretending that it is. Second, your experience of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is not equivalent to proof that everyone is capable of it, so stop claiming that it is.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on October 05, 2016, 11:56:11 AM

No comment on the link I posted on savings rates over the last 25 years+ by age group several days ago?

I followed your link but I'm not sure what point you are trying to make that would be different from what I've already said (unfortunately it lumps everyone 0-35 together).  Personal savings rate is poor, yet DPI has shown modest gains. Our collective problem is that we are spending all our money and saving almost nothing. As I indicated earlier, collectively (all age groups) we are spending more on cars and homes, even while comparable costs on those items remain about the same.

What do you see in the data?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 12:01:49 PM
What do you see in the data?

Already mentioned it a few other times. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 12:08:15 PM
Sooooo what you are saying is that you have ZERO experience with the actual ability to bootstrap yourself up in the world, yet claim that it's not possible or next to impossible for someone to do just that? 

I am the freaking poster child for bootstrapping, crappy family life, poor financial role models, crushing student debt, experience in getting a job at the height of the recession etc.  I am standing here as a very well off early 30's woman with a six figure salary telling you that it IS possible if you don't suffer from a disibility or extreme bone crushing poverty.  Yet apparently I am the "exception". 

No luck, on this planet your overly pleasant and perfect upbringing is the exception.  People bootstrap themselves up every. damn. day. 

Let me ask you:  What did you score on the SAT/ACT or on standardized tests in general?  I'm guessing minimum top 20%.   Do you really think you'd be in the same financial position if you had a below average IQ, particular with respect to math and science?   Additionally, perhaps you even got lucky in obtaining your first job.  Not trying to discount your success, it's just that people have no idea how much fortune can play a role in their own success.  I know I've had some luck.       

Hard work and determination is helpful to achieving success, but it's definitely nowhere near enough, that's all I and others are arguing. 

As someone mentioned, it takes hard work, talent, and luck to be successful.  Obviously, only one of the 3 is within one's control.   Do the math.   
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on October 05, 2016, 12:10:11 PM
What do you see in the data?

Already mentioned it a few other times.
I'm not understanding the disconnect here.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 12:24:11 PM
Check this link of average starting salary + bonus of MBA grads.   Average MBA grad is about 30.     They say average of all 128 schools is 90K so let's guess that #50 school = $100K.    GMAT score of #50 is about 640-650 which is 70th percentile but that's for GMAT takers who are definitely a lot smarter than your average person.   So at absolute minimum, top 30% = $100K, but realistically, probably more like top 15-20%.   

Of course MBA grads are very likely to be more hardworking, more ambitious, and from a higher socioeconomic background than the average person.  Do you people still think it's easy to get to 100K by age 30 given this? 

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/articles/2016-03-07/us-news-data-job-rates-starting-salaries-for-mba-grads
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 12:29:02 PM
What do you see in the data?

Already mentioned it a few other times.
I'm not understanding the disconnect here.

This the last time I'm going to go over this.  I've heard it said people are more materialistic and hence worse savers than in the past, especially young people.  Well, the data clearly doesn't show they are any worse than older cohorts were at the same age, in fact they are better. 

Savings rates went down from the 70's to the late 80's but clearly from the data, it's been dismal since 1990.  It's not like there's anything specifically irresponsible about young people today. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Enigma on October 05, 2016, 12:38:13 PM
I keep reading the article and looking at both of the charts (not just the first one).  I would say the Net Worth for a 30 year old around 27k and 54k is nearly the same for both generations.  The second chart in the article "Avg household income for people born in different decades" both decades appear to be between 20-25k when they were in their 30s.

These younger years are also the time in people lives that they are not even thinking about retirement.  I only wish I was thinking about retirement in my 20s (I am sure some mustachians did but I didn't).  The net worth of 40 year olds and 50 year olds in different generations is a much better indicator then when people are still starting careers and worry about something besides where their friends and next party are.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on October 05, 2016, 12:40:06 PM
What do you see in the data?

Already mentioned it a few other times.
I'm not understanding the disconnect here.

This the last time I'm going to go over this.  I've heard it said people are more materialistic and hence worse savers than in the past, especially young people.  Well, the data clearly doesn't show they are any worse than older cohorts were at the same age, in fact they are better. 

Savings rates went down from the 70's to the late 80's but clearly from the data, it's been dismal since 1990.  It's not like there's anything specifically irresponsible about young people today.
Au contrare - I have provided you with multiple examples of how spending today has increased over previous generations and how discretionary income has actually increased..  The fact that savings rates have been dismal since the 1990s seems to bolster my argument, not yours. Per the OP article, what we are talking about is the difference in savings over the last few decades, not since the 70s/80s. Savings rate is a function of income.  If its negative (which appears to be the case for at least some of the cohort we are talking about) then NW will actually suffer faster as incomes increase.

I never commented on whether the spending was "irresponsible" - that's putting words into my mouth (or onto my screen). The bottom line is we are spending more. Whether the items we are spending money on can be considered "irresponsible" is a moral judgement.
Also, as I said before, a household could be "above average" according to this survey if they had done nothing more than contribute to an IRA - I don't see how that's even questionable.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Guses on October 05, 2016, 12:48:05 PM
If two people apply for a job, only one person can get it. If one person leaves a position, it creates a vacancy to be filled.

The total number of positions/jobs can increase or decrease but, at any given moment it is a set number.

Even if this is true (which it's not), how is it relevant to anything? Jack also points out the obvious truism above that not everybody can earn $300,000 per year, and I think this is just intended to be another way of rephrasing that. I've never disputed that fact, but it's totally irrelevant to everything I've posted in this thread. It's about as insightful as saying that the economy would be destroyed if everybody became frugal, because, even if true, it's just not going to happen. Most people will never put in the effort to earn $300,000 per year -- or even anything close to that -- so we don't need to worry about what would happen if everybody did attempt to.


You're quoting a reply to a reply I made following a comment by Ender. Maybe that is why you don't think it's relevant?


First example: Cathy is born as a Native American in 1766. How does Cathy become a millionaire?

All of my comments in this thread, and everywhere else on the forum, are intended to apply to the circumstances of the present-day United States, unless otherwise indicated. I may not have explicitly stated this until now, but there were some pretty obvious hints that this was the case, such as speaking in the present tense when saying it is open to you to earn $300,000 if you want.

As for your attempts to personalise the thread, I'm going to have to decline to participate. There's really no winning with people who want to personalise topics like this. Even if somebody had to overcome every imaginable obstacle to get where they are, and is able to outline a moving story of overcoming adversity through hard work, you would just write it off as exceptional and learn nothing from it. Other people might learn from it, but you, Guses, certainly would not. Some people just don't want to hear about how they can improve their station in life.

Yes, it's called Reductio ad Absurdum. I am only exposing that your original statement in post #59 is demonstrably false.

I don't know why you have to attack me Cathy, if you disagree with my statements, feel free to present arguments instead of hand waving and wishy washy statements.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Mr. Green on October 05, 2016, 12:50:10 PM
Why is this article anything other than common sense? 10-15 years ago people's net worth was buoyed by the longest bull run in history. People in their 30's now had two bear markets to deal with. Duh?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MishMash on October 05, 2016, 12:59:06 PM
Sooooo what you are saying is that you have ZERO experience with the actual ability to bootstrap yourself up in the world, yet claim that it's not possible or next to impossible for someone to do just that? 

I am the freaking poster child for bootstrapping, crappy family life, poor financial role models, crushing student debt, experience in getting a job at the height of the recession etc.  I am standing here as a very well off early 30's woman with a six figure salary telling you that it IS possible if you don't suffer from a disibility or extreme bone crushing poverty.  Yet apparently I am the "exception". 

No luck, on this planet your overly pleasant and perfect upbringing is the exception.  People bootstrap themselves up every. damn. day. 


Let me ask you:  What did you score on the SAT/ACT or on standardized tests in general?  I'm guessing minimum top 20%.   Do you really think you'd be in the same financial position if you had a below average IQ, particular with respect to math and science?   Additionally, perhaps you even got lucky in obtaining your first job.  Not trying to discount your success, it's just that people have no idea how much fortune can play a role in their own success.  I know I've had some luck.       

Hard work and determination is helpful to achieving success, but it's definitely nowhere near enough, that's all I and others are arguing. 

As someone mentioned, it takes hard work, talent, and luck to be successful.  Obviously, only one of the 3 is within one's control.   Do the math.

English I was top 10%, I read A LOT as a kid.  Math...well now math has been a constant struggle my entire life, it still is, I was in the bottom 30-35ish% on the SATs if I recall and I never took the ACTs.  Hence the million extra hours I had to do to get an engineering degree.  I still, to this day, couldn't answer most basic geometry questions.

Jack, of course not everyone can do everything perfectly, we'd all be robots in a utopian society if that were the case.  The entire point of this though is that it IS possible and it's possible for more then just the onesy twosies you seem to think it is, that's what everyone here is saying.  They are sharing their personal experiences so that you know it's not as rare as you think it is.  You just don't want to believe it.

Being successful early, provided you are of able body and mind, is an extreme case ONLY because more people don't seek out the knowledge that is needed to do better for themselves, they prioritze stuff and status quo because heck, that's the "American way" and that's across ALL generations.  As someone pointed out earlier in the thread, needs now are a lot different then needs 20 years ago.  Now kids "need" that iphone, 2500 square foot house, 2 new cars, latest subscription clothing service, mail order food etc.  Those things weren't considered "needs" 20 years ago.  Personal choices and personal responsibility play a much bigger part in things then you want to realize.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 05, 2016, 01:41:30 PM
Jack, of course not everyone can do everything perfectly, we'd all be robots in a utopian society if that were the case.  The entire point of this though is that it IS possible and it's possible for more then just the onesy twosies you seem to think it is, that's what everyone here is saying.  They are sharing their personal experiences so that you know it's not as rare as you think it is.  You just don't want to believe it.

Stop with the strawman arguments and hasty generalizations/false dichotomies already!

Fallacy 1 (strawman): I did not claim that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is only possible by "the onesy twosies," either "seemingly" or actually. You are consistently exaggerating the magnitude of my claims in order to falsely pretend they aren't correct. Learn the difference between "none," "few," "some," "many," "most," and "all" -- none of which are equivalent terms -- please!

Fallacy 2 (hasty generalization): "Everyone here" is not making the same point. Luck12 and I are making different points, just to name two counterexamples.

Fallacy 3: Personal experiences (i.e. anecdotes) are not data. They can be useful as examples (including as counterexamples to disprove contrary claims), but are not evidence of trends by themselves. For example, you can use your anecdote to disprove the claim that "nobody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps," but not to prove the claim that "everybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps."

Fallacies 4, 5, and 6: "You just don't want to believe it" is an ad-hominem attack, attempt at proof by assertion, and another strawman (since we disagree on what "it" -- the claim you are accusing me of not wanting to believe -- is), all rolled into one sentence.

Being successful early, provided you are of able body and mind, is an extreme case ONLY because more people don't seek out the knowledge that is needed to do better for themselves

That's an extremely specific and unequivocal claim. What evidence do you have of it? None so far, that I've seen! It seems to me to be nothing more than an ideologically-based proof by assertion (again!). It is not only useless as a point of discussion, but actively distracts from attempts to discover the real problem.

Besides, something is still apparently different between previous generations and now (assuming Cathy isn't correct that the whole thing can be explained by margin of error). So what is it? Even if the idea that "people don't seek out the knowledge" were on the right track, does that mean you are claiming that it has become harder to seek out that knowledge than it was before?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Luck12 on October 05, 2016, 01:54:32 PM
The fact that savings rates have been dismal since the 1990s seems to bolster my argument, not yours. Per the OP article, what we are talking about is the difference in savings over the last few decades, not since the 70s/80s. Savings rate is a function of income.  If its negative (which appears to be the case for at least some of the cohort we are talking about) then NW will actually suffer faster as incomes increase.

Original article is for UK I believe so I'm just talking US here.   Article compares age 30's now vs age 30's then, hence why I mentioned savings rates by age over time.   No, young people are not saving less now than young people 10 years ago or 25 years ago, it could not get any clearer!  Jesus christ.  That's what the article is about, a comparison over time.  Can you offer any evidence supporting the assertion/implication of many on this thread that young people are worse savers now than young people 10,20, 25 years ago?  I don't think so! 

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on October 05, 2016, 02:10:54 PM
The fact that savings rates have been dismal since the 1990s seems to bolster my argument, not yours. Per the OP article, what we are talking about is the difference in savings over the last few decades, not since the 70s/80s. Savings rate is a function of income.  If its negative (which appears to be the case for at least some of the cohort we are talking about) then NW will actually suffer faster as incomes increase.

Original article is for UK I believe so I'm just talking US here.   Article compares age 30's now vs age 30's then, hence why I mentioned savings rates by age over time.   No, young people are not saving less now than young people 10 years ago or 25 years ago, it could not get any clearer!  Jesus christ.  That's what the article is about, a comparison over time.  Can you offer any evidence supporting the assertion/implication of many on this thread that young people are worse savers now than young people 10,20, 25 years ago?  I don't think so!

The article you cite groups everyone age 0-35, and shows a negative savings rate.  As shown upthread, income has increased, particularly since the 'great recession' when so many in this broad age bracket were either unemployed or went back to school.
a negative savings rate combined with increases in income result means there is more spending.
as for evidence, i've given examples upthread of the population in general with regards to cars and homes (particularly first-time homes) - it's worth noting that the average first-time home buyer in the US is age 33; right in the target group we are talking about.

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Dollar Slice on October 05, 2016, 02:21:30 PM
Why is this article anything other than common sense? 10-15 years ago people's net worth was buoyed by the longest bull run in history. People in their 30's now had two bear markets to deal with. Duh?

Yeah, I am in my 30s, started my first full-time job in late 1999. Started investing almost immediately. The first ten years of investing, 2000-2010, the S&P 500 was close to 0% return (depending on how you calculate). If I were ten years older and started investing ten years earlier? 1990-2000 returns were more like 300%! Yeah, that'll change the average numbers just a bit...
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: JrDoctor on October 05, 2016, 02:41:37 PM
The geographical arbitrage in the UK has also shifted.  As Doubleh points out, in the past a move to London to grow equity by taking advantage of rising housing demand there worked well to "create" wealth.  These days London is an much more international city with the associated pressures, and a much more difficult place to live in and in which to make those sorts of gains.  Someone interested in building wealth in the UK now should probably go either to an expanding but cheaper city (Birmingham would be my choice) or to a poorer area of the country where housing is cheap compared to a professional/entrepreneurial income, and invest in the stock market.

Agree with this, the capital involved in London housing makes it tricky and high risk as an investment.  Poorer areas are definitely a better way of generating wealth.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: MishMash on October 05, 2016, 02:45:44 PM
Jack, of course not everyone can do everything perfectly, we'd all be robots in a utopian society if that were the case.  The entire point of this though is that it IS possible and it's possible for more then just the onesy twosies you seem to think it is, that's what everyone here is saying.  They are sharing their personal experiences so that you know it's not as rare as you think it is.  You just don't want to believe it.

Stop with the strawman arguments and hasty generalizations/false dichotomies already!

Fallacy 1 (strawman): I did not claim that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is only possible by "the onesy twosies," either "seemingly" or actually. You are consistently exaggerating the magnitude of my claims in order to falsely pretend they aren't correct. Learn the difference between "none," "few," "some," "many," "most," and "all" -- none of which are equivalent terms -- please!

Fallacy 2 (hasty generalization): "Everyone here" is not making the same point. Luck12 and I are making different points, just to name two counterexamples.

Fallacy 3: Personal experiences (i.e. anecdotes) are not data. They can be useful as examples (including as counterexamples to disprove contrary claims), but are not evidence of trends by themselves. For example, you can use your anecdote to disprove the claim that "nobody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps," but not to prove the claim that "everybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps."

Fallacies 4, 5, and 6: "You just don't want to believe it" is an ad-hominem attack, attempt at proof by assertion, and another strawman (since we disagree on what "it" -- the claim you are accusing me of not wanting to believe -- is), all rolled into one sentence.

Being successful early, provided you are of able body and mind, is an extreme case ONLY because more people don't seek out the knowledge that is needed to do better for themselves

That's an extremely specific and unequivocal claim. What evidence do you have of it? None so far, that I've seen! It seems to me to be nothing more than an ideologically-based proof by assertion (again!). It is not only useless as a point of discussion, but actively distracts from attempts to discover the real problem.

Besides, something is still apparently different between previous generations and now (assuming Cathy isn't correct that the whole thing can be explained by margin of error). So what is it? Even if the idea that "people don't seek out the knowledge" were on the right track, does that mean you are claiming that it has become harder to seek out that knowledge than it was before?

Jack, you mean kind of like your over exagerrations of well not EVERYONE can pull themselves up (so therefore its not really a feasible option), or EVERYONE would become an engineer and then NO one would work at McDonalds?  Broad claims against personal responsibility are met with broad claims for it.

Personal ancedotes ARE data.   Simply because one was not surveyed does not make that data point any less significant in overall terms.  But here's one from Bloomberg looking at non essential expenditure increases over time.  Data is from the BEA which also has several tables and articles relating to the same thing https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-11-02/americans-spend-more-on-stuff-they-don-t-need
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: TexasRunner on October 05, 2016, 02:47:12 PM
most people are capable of being electricians or plumbers or welders or any other trade labor.  10k hours. you may need better brain capacity to be an engineer but there are shortages of trade labor world wide.

Do you genuinely think a trade worker could earn 100k a year or save 1MM by thirty?...

(Not you specifically boarder but) Some of the ideas and thoughts shown on here are INSANE.  The concept that anyone could make 100k a year if they simply 'tried harder' is absolute BS.  The concept (posted earlier) that millennials bouncing between companies because they "are impatient" is INSANE.  They bounce between companies because bureaucratic nitwits in management assume no one should get higher than 3% raise per year and the only way to command higher pay is to change companies.

I challenge everyone on this thread to read or at least skim (and consider) this article:  http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/01/donald-trump-and-politics-of-resentment.html (http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/01/donald-trump-and-politics-of-resentment.html)

Quote
It so happens that you can determine a huge amount about the economic and social prospects of people in America today by asking one remarkably simple question: how do they get most of their income? Broadly speaking—there are exceptions, which I’ll get to in a moment—it’s from one of four sources: returns on investment, a monthly salary, an hourly wage, or a government welfare check. People who get most of their income from one of those four things have a great many interests in common, so much so that it’s meaningful to speak of the American people as divided into an investment class, a salary class, a wage class, and a welfare class.

Quote
The answer, of course, is that three of the four have remained roughly where they were. The investment class has actually had a bit of a rough time, as many of the investment vehicles that used to provide it with stable incomes—certificates of deposit, government bonds, and so on—have seen interest rates drop through the floor.  ...

The salary class, similarly, has maintained its familiar privileges and perks through a half century of convulsive change. ...

And the wage class? Over the last half century, the wage class has been destroyed.

In 1966 an American family with one breadwinner working full time at an hourly wage could count on having a home, a car, three square meals a day, and the other ordinary necessities of life, with some left over for the occasional luxury. In 2016, an American family with one breadwinner working full time at an hourly wage is as likely as not to end up living on the street

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/01/donald-trump-and-politics-of-resentment.html (http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/01/donald-trump-and-politics-of-resentment.html)

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 05, 2016, 03:17:14 PM
Jack, you mean kind of like your over exagerrations of well not EVERYONE can pull themselves up (so therefore its not really a feasible option), or EVERYONE would become an engineer and then NO one would work at McDonalds?  Broad claims against personal responsibility are met with broad claims for it.

You know what? I've changed my mind. I no longer believe you are intentionally misrepresenting my claims; I now believe you lack the reading comprehension skills to understand them. (For example, you apparently got my engineers/McDonalds thought experiment exactly backwards -- and also fail to understand the difference between "getting an engineering degree" and "being employed as an engineer," for that matter.)

Good luck with that.

Personal ancedotes ARE data.   Simply because one was not surveyed does not make that data point any less significant in overall terms.

No, they're not. They only become data when you have a whole bunch of them! Conversely, each individual data point within a set is pretty damn insignificant by itself.

(This time, your fallacy is the fallacy of division, by the way.)

But here's one from Bloomberg looking at non essential expenditure increases over time.  Data is from the BEA which also has several tables and articles relating to the same thing https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-11-02/americans-spend-more-on-stuff-they-don-t-need

FYI, you've failed to comprehend that article too. It's understandable, since trying to talk about the change in spending rates (i.e., the second derivative of spending, an acceleration) is pretty confusing to begin with. It's also entirely possible for it to be misleading, because knowing about an acceleration says nothing about what the position is: you'd have to integrate twice, generating two unknown constants. In other words, what we need is a breakdown of different generational cohorts' actual "wants" and "needs" spending expressed as a fraction of income, not the acceleration of it.

Regardless, it appears that you have completely ignored at least part of the article's conclusion:

Quote from: article
The increasing importance of nonessential spending has various possible interpretations...

Alternatively, it could reflect the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich, who naturally devote a larger share of their expenditures to luxury goods and services. Their income has become more volatile in recent decades, so perhaps their spending is doing the same, driving faster growth in nonessential goods during recoveries. If so, that could mean a bumpier ride for less affluent folks.

And finally, note that your article says nothing about Millennials and/or people in their 30s. For all we know, the entire increase could be due to the actions of Baby Boomers, drowning out an opposite trend among younger people!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: TexasRunner on October 05, 2016, 04:10:31 PM
Being better than average is what sets you apart.
If you believe that I have a bridge I want to sell you. There is a reason why success is generally attributed to "Hard Work, Talent, Luck." It doesn't matter if you are the absolute best in the world at something, if don't have a bit of luck in the mix you might end up just another of the unwashed masses. How often to business owners attribute failings to bad luck and everyone nods knowingly? Talent gets back to the point I made earlier, not everyone has the talent for things and all the hard work in the world will not save you if you don't have the talent for something.

Luck is a concept invented by the weak to explain their failures.

Like MMM's creation of a home-building company immediately before a recession.  :rolleyes:

This might be true in some cases but you can't honestly claim that there is not a degree of luck/chance involved in everyone's life.

I'll give you an example...  The best soccer referee in the world can't officiate the World Cup Final because one of the finalists is from his home country.  Is this bad luck or "a concept [the referee] invented to explain his failure"?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: 2lazy2retire on October 06, 2016, 06:29:01 AM
Jesus it's not difficult, we all victims of wiring and circumstance. Sure a kid from a dodgy background and poor SAT scores can become a electrician and earn 100k a year but we all know that not every kid from that background is going to do that - can someone explain why if you take 10 people from the same challenged background only one makes it out, you think the other 9 make a conscious decision that doing a shit load of drugs and getting a record is a better long term option that going to trade school?.
 My question is, what in a persons make up leads to the choices they make in life - personally I think nobody knows the answer to this and to suggest that any individual can turn on/off the ability to point their life in the right direction is a fairytale which we can use to blame people for their own misfortune. Simple be glad you are who you are that your makeup allowed you the make the choices you did, others are not so fortunate - we won the lottery and we should stop f@cking judging people. There will always be a segment of the population that are rich/poor/smart/stupid/thin/fat etc etc etc.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: ender on October 06, 2016, 06:35:08 AM
Like MMM's creation of a home-building company immediately before a recession.  :rolleyes:

This might be true in some cases but you can't honestly claim that there is not a degree of luck/chance involved in everyone's life.

I'll give you an example...  The best soccer referee in the world can't officiate the World Cup Final because one of the finalists is from his home country.  Is this bad luck or "a concept [the referee] invented to explain his failure"?

The overwhelming majority of "lucky" people I know are lucky by consistently taking advantage of those opportunities and putting themselves into position to do so.

A lot of people have a lot of opportunities to be lucky that their lack of planning prevents them from taking.

There are circumstantial things (who you are born to, your intellect, etc) but I think anyone on these forums has the ability to plan to take advantage of future opportunities and thus become "more lucky."
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 06, 2016, 06:58:19 AM
Like MMM's creation of a home-building company immediately before a recession.  :rolleyes:

This might be true in some cases but you can't honestly claim that there is not a degree of luck/chance involved in everyone's life.

I'll give you an example...  The best soccer referee in the world can't officiate the World Cup Final because one of the finalists is from his home country.  Is this bad luck or "a concept [the referee] invented to explain his failure"?

The overwhelming majority of "lucky" people I know are lucky by consistently taking advantage of those opportunities and putting themselves into position to do so.

A lot of people have a lot of opportunities to be lucky that their lack of planning prevents them from taking.

There are circumstantial things (who you are born to, your intellect, etc) but I think anyone on these forums has the ability to plan to take advantage of future opportunities and thus become "more lucky."

It's possible for luck and hard work to coexist.  It's not an exclusive or.

There are many people who work hard and reap the rewards of working hard - they get ahead.  They owe some of their success to their hard work, some of it to the circumstances that set them on the right path, and some of it to luck.

Will a person who is an extremely hard worker get ahead of others?  Yep.
Will a person who is born to great circumstances tend to get ahead of others?  Yep.
Do some people just luck out and get ahead of others?  Yep.

There's almost always something that you can do to improve your position in life if you really want it.  It's also true that there isn't a level playing field, and some people will never do as well as others due to luck and circumstance.  You're both kinda right which is why this argument is going in circles.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: 2lazy2retire on October 06, 2016, 07:05:41 AM
Like MMM's creation of a home-building company immediately before a recession.  :rolleyes:

This might be true in some cases but you can't honestly claim that there is not a degree of luck/chance involved in everyone's life.

I'll give you an example...  The best soccer referee in the world can't officiate the World Cup Final because one of the finalists is from his home country.  Is this bad luck or "a concept [the referee] invented to explain his failure"?

The overwhelming majority of "lucky" people I know are lucky by consistently taking advantage of those opportunities and putting themselves into position to do so.

A lot of people have a lot of opportunities to be lucky that their lack of planning prevents them from taking.

There are circumstantial things (who you are born to, your intellect, etc) but I think anyone on these forums has the ability to plan to take advantage of future opportunities and thus become "more lucky."

It's possible for luck and hard work to coexist.  It's not an exclusive or.

There are many people who work hard and reap the rewards of working hard - they get ahead.  They owe some of their success to their hard work, some of it to the circumstances that set them on the right path, and some of it to luck.

Will a person who is an extremely hard worker get ahead of others?  Yep.
Will a person who is born to great circumstances tend to get ahead of others?  Yep.
Do some people just luck out and get ahead of others?  Yep.

There's almost always something that you can do to improve your position in life if you really want it.  It's also true that there isn't a level playing field, and some people will never do as well as others due to luck and circumstance.  You're both kinda right which is why this argument is going in circles.

I think it goes beyond even circumstance and luck - what allows a person to make a choice to work hard or not and do they really have any control over it?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: boarder42 on October 06, 2016, 07:31:56 AM
Like MMM's creation of a home-building company immediately before a recession.  :rolleyes:

This might be true in some cases but you can't honestly claim that there is not a degree of luck/chance involved in everyone's life.

I'll give you an example...  The best soccer referee in the world can't officiate the World Cup Final because one of the finalists is from his home country.  Is this bad luck or "a concept [the referee] invented to explain his failure"?

The overwhelming majority of "lucky" people I know are lucky by consistently taking advantage of those opportunities and putting themselves into position to do so.

A lot of people have a lot of opportunities to be lucky that their lack of planning prevents them from taking.

There are circumstantial things (who you are born to, your intellect, etc) but I think anyone on these forums has the ability to plan to take advantage of future opportunities and thus become "more lucky."

It's possible for luck and hard work to coexist.  It's not an exclusive or.

There are many people who work hard and reap the rewards of working hard - they get ahead.  They owe some of their success to their hard work, some of it to the circumstances that set them on the right path, and some of it to luck.

Will a person who is an extremely hard worker get ahead of others?  Yep.
Will a person who is born to great circumstances tend to get ahead of others?  Yep.
Do some people just luck out and get ahead of others?  Yep.

There's almost always something that you can do to improve your position in life if you really want it.  It's also true that there isn't a level playing field, and some people will never do as well as others due to luck and circumstance.  You're both kinda right which is why this argument is going in circles.

I think it goes beyond even circumstance and luck - what allows a person to make a choice to work hard or not and do they really have any control over it?

so now you're gonna go into some phsycological BS about why people cant choose to work hard ... is there some puppet master controlling our every move and we actually make no decisions.  are we just computer programs in the matrix.  how far do you want to take that thought? 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 06, 2016, 07:36:47 AM
Like MMM's creation of a home-building company immediately before a recession.  :rolleyes:

This might be true in some cases but you can't honestly claim that there is not a degree of luck/chance involved in everyone's life.

I'll give you an example...  The best soccer referee in the world can't officiate the World Cup Final because one of the finalists is from his home country.  Is this bad luck or "a concept [the referee] invented to explain his failure"?

The overwhelming majority of "lucky" people I know are lucky by consistently taking advantage of those opportunities and putting themselves into position to do so.

A lot of people have a lot of opportunities to be lucky that their lack of planning prevents them from taking.

There are circumstantial things (who you are born to, your intellect, etc) but I think anyone on these forums has the ability to plan to take advantage of future opportunities and thus become "more lucky."

It's possible for luck and hard work to coexist.  It's not an exclusive or.

There are many people who work hard and reap the rewards of working hard - they get ahead.  They owe some of their success to their hard work, some of it to the circumstances that set them on the right path, and some of it to luck.

Will a person who is an extremely hard worker get ahead of others?  Yep.
Will a person who is born to great circumstances tend to get ahead of others?  Yep.
Do some people just luck out and get ahead of others?  Yep.

There's almost always something that you can do to improve your position in life if you really want it.  It's also true that there isn't a level playing field, and some people will never do as well as others due to luck and circumstance.  You're both kinda right which is why this argument is going in circles.

I think it goes beyond even circumstance and luck - what allows a person to make a choice to work hard or not and do they really have any control over it?

That question (while an important one) largely depends on your definition of free will, and is probably beyond the scope of this debate.  If you believe in free will, you're probably going to say that people have a choice.  If you are on the side of most modern research, that indicates free will doesn't really exist . . . well, that's a whole new can of worms.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 06, 2016, 07:39:45 AM
I don't think delving into a philosophical discussion of free will is necessary. If people of below-average intelligence can't simply "choose" to be geniuses, is it really that implausible that people of below-average work ethic can't simply "choose" to be motivated?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 06, 2016, 07:42:33 AM
I don't think delving into a philosophical discussion of free will is necessary. If people of below-average intelligence can't simply "choose" to be geniuses, is it really that implausible that people of below-average work ethic can't simply "choose" to be motivated?

If nobody can choose anything, then there our entire society (which is heavily built upon the concept of personal responsibility) kinda falls apart.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: jtraggie99 on October 06, 2016, 07:46:40 AM
Like MMM's creation of a home-building company immediately before a recession.  :rolleyes:

This might be true in some cases but you can't honestly claim that there is not a degree of luck/chance involved in everyone's life.

I'll give you an example...  The best soccer referee in the world can't officiate the World Cup Final because one of the finalists is from his home country.  Is this bad luck or "a concept [the referee] invented to explain his failure"?

The overwhelming majority of "lucky" people I know are lucky by consistently taking advantage of those opportunities and putting themselves into position to do so.

A lot of people have a lot of opportunities to be lucky that their lack of planning prevents them from taking.

There are circumstantial things (who you are born to, your intellect, etc) but I think anyone on these forums has the ability to plan to take advantage of future opportunities and thus become "more lucky."

It's possible for luck and hard work to coexist.  It's not an exclusive or.

There are many people who work hard and reap the rewards of working hard - they get ahead.  They owe some of their success to their hard work, some of it to the circumstances that set them on the right path, and some of it to luck.

Will a person who is an extremely hard worker get ahead of others?  Yep.
Will a person who is born to great circumstances tend to get ahead of others?  Yep.
Do some people just luck out and get ahead of others?  Yep.

There's almost always something that you can do to improve your position in life if you really want it.  It's also true that there isn't a level playing field, and some people will never do as well as others due to luck and circumstance.  You're both kinda right which is why this argument is going in circles.

I think it goes beyond even circumstance and luck - what allows a person to make a choice to work hard or not and do they really have any control over it?


As was pointed out above, at the end of the day it's simply a combination of genetics (intellect and ability) and environment.  Even if you grew up in the worst environment and were taught nothing by your parents, somewhere along the way, someone interacted with you in such a manner that you learned the importance of hard work or the value of a good education, etc, etc.  You did not just magically acquire it on your own.  And there are plenty of examples of very intelligent people who never amounted to much because they were not exposed to the tools and ideas growing up that would prepare them to be more successful in life down the road.  Despite what anyone thinks about all that they accomplished in their life, no one did it without help (being that you were fortunate enough to be around people at some point that helped lead you down the right path). 

Either way, all any of us can do is do the best with the hand we are dealt.  Some people are simply never going to make good decisions and accomplish what they would want.  That's just life.  Of course living in a capitalistic society, by definition, for some to be wealthy, some others cannot be.  It's kind of like the old adage about if everyone had a million dollars, a million dollars wouldn't be worth much.  I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it's just the way it is though.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 06, 2016, 07:49:03 AM
I don't think delving into a philosophical discussion of free will is necessary. If people of below-average intelligence can't simply "choose" to be geniuses, is it really that implausible that people of below-average work ethic can't simply "choose" to be motivated?

If nobody can choose anything, then there our entire society (which is heavily built upon the concept of personal responsibility) kinda falls apart.

"Nobody can choose anything" is not even slightly like anything I wrote. I'm getting really sick and tired of the strawman arguments in this thread!
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: ender on October 06, 2016, 07:51:25 AM
There's almost always something that you can do to improve your position in life if you really want it.  It's also true that there isn't a level playing field, and some people will never do as well as others due to luck and circumstance.  You're both kinda right which is why this argument is going in circles.

Right.

It's intellectually dishonest to take either position to its extreme - that everything is 100% outside your control, or, that everything you've done is purely the product of your own decisions.

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: 2lazy2retire on October 06, 2016, 07:57:08 AM
Like MMM's creation of a home-building company immediately before a recession.  :rolleyes:

This might be true in some cases but you can't honestly claim that there is not a degree of luck/chance involved in everyone's life.

I'll give you an example...  The best soccer referee in the world can't officiate the World Cup Final because one of the finalists is from his home country.  Is this bad luck or "a concept [the referee] invented to explain his failure"?

The overwhelming majority of "lucky" people I know are lucky by consistently taking advantage of those opportunities and putting themselves into position to do so.

A lot of people have a lot of opportunities to be lucky that their lack of planning prevents them from taking.

There are circumstantial things (who you are born to, your intellect, etc) but I think anyone on these forums has the ability to plan to take advantage of future opportunities and thus become "more lucky."

It's possible for luck and hard work to coexist.  It's not an exclusive or.

There are many people who work hard and reap the rewards of working hard - they get ahead.  They owe some of their success to their hard work, some of it to the circumstances that set them on the right path, and some of it to luck.

Will a person who is an extremely hard worker get ahead of others?  Yep.
Will a person who is born to great circumstances tend to get ahead of others?  Yep.
Do some people just luck out and get ahead of others?  Yep.

There's almost always something that you can do to improve your position in life if you really want it.  It's also true that there isn't a level playing field, and some people will never do as well as others due to luck and circumstance.  You're both kinda right which is why this argument is going in circles.

I think it goes beyond even circumstance and luck - what allows a person to make a choice to work hard or not and do they really have any control over it?

so now you're gonna go into some phsycological BS about why people cant choose to work hard ... is there some puppet master controlling our every move and we actually make no decisions.  are we just computer programs in the matrix.  how far do you want to take that thought?

Can you answer me why one individual would choose to go the school and learn with an eye on the future, while the other sits at home watching TV and smoking pot - simple answer not need for puppet masters and computer programs.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Chris22 on October 06, 2016, 07:59:03 AM
I've got to think two of the biggest drivers in this are A) the exploding price of college and resulting student loan burden, and B) the availability of no/low down payment loans on housing. Both of those would cause a serious surge on the liabilities side of the ole personal balance sheet without any (tangible fiscal) offset on the assets side.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: nereo on October 06, 2016, 08:00:02 AM

"Nobody can choose anything" is not even slightly like anything I wrote. I'm getting really sick and tired of the strawman arguments in this thread!

You can't defeat them all, Jack!!
(https://beggarsbreaddotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/straw-men.jpg?w=614&h=346)
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: 2lazy2retire on October 06, 2016, 08:00:25 AM
I don't think delving into a philosophical discussion of free will is necessary. If people of below-average intelligence can't simply "choose" to be geniuses, is it really that implausible that people of below-average work ethic can't simply "choose" to be motivated?

If nobody can choose anything, then there our entire society (which is heavily built upon the concept of personal responsibility) kinda falls apart.

Everyone can make choices and we all do every day and they most definitely impact how our lives end up - but what allows one person to make what is perceived as a good choice and another person a bad choice?, f@cked if I know.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 06, 2016, 08:00:36 AM
I don't think delving into a philosophical discussion of free will is necessary. If people of below-average intelligence can't simply "choose" to be geniuses, is it really that implausible that people of below-average work ethic can't simply "choose" to be motivated?

If nobody can choose anything, then there our entire society (which is heavily built upon the concept of personal responsibility) kinda falls apart.

As a hardcore determinist, I couldn't disagree more.  This is a fallacy put forth by people who don't actually understand free will or determinism, and say silly things like "if one has no free will, we can't hold them accountable!" which is just ridiculous.  I'd be happy to discuss in a free will thread, but I couldn't let this statement pass unchallenged.  It's simply not true.

It's intellectually dishonest to take either position to its extreme - that everything is 100% outside your control, or, that everything you've done is purely the product of your own decisions.

I don't appreciate being called intellectually dishonest, when the first one you mention is, in fact, my position. :)

What you meant, I'm assuming, is that it's intellectually dishonest to set up one of those two extremes as the position you're arguing against if the other person you're arguing with doesn't believe one of those two extremes (i.e. a straw man, or putting words in their mouth).
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 06, 2016, 08:07:59 AM
I don't think delving into a philosophical discussion of free will is necessary. If people of below-average intelligence can't simply "choose" to be geniuses, is it really that implausible that people of below-average work ethic can't simply "choose" to be motivated?
If nobody can choose anything, then there our entire society (which is heavily built upon the concept of personal responsibility) kinda falls apart.

As a hardcore determinist, I couldn't disagree more.  This is a fallacy put forth by people who don't actually understand free will or determinism, and say silly things like "if one has no free will, we can't hold them accountable!" which is just ridiculous.  I'd be happy to discuss in a free will thread, but I couldn't let this statement pass unchallenged.  It's simply not true.

I for one, would love to hear your argument on this matter.  My tendencies lean towards believing that things are predetermined, but have run into some issues reconciling this with the concept of personal responsibility.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Jack on October 06, 2016, 08:16:49 AM
You can't defeat them all, Jack!!

Says you!

(https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png)

(I also considered referencing Don Quixote or Sisyphus.)
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 06, 2016, 08:17:57 AM
I don't think delving into a philosophical discussion of free will is necessary. If people of below-average intelligence can't simply "choose" to be geniuses, is it really that implausible that people of below-average work ethic can't simply "choose" to be motivated?
If nobody can choose anything, then there our entire society (which is heavily built upon the concept of personal responsibility) kinda falls apart.

As a hardcore determinist, I couldn't disagree more.  This is a fallacy put forth by people who don't actually understand free will or determinism, and say silly things like "if one has no free will, we can't hold them accountable!" which is just ridiculous.  I'd be happy to discuss in a free will thread, but I couldn't let this statement pass unchallenged.  It's simply not true.

I for one, would love to hear your argument on this matter.  My tendencies lean towards believing that things are predetermined, but have run into some issues reconciling this with the concept of personal responsibility.

Events are not, IMO, predetermined. That has a very specific, different meaning (usually religious).   They are determined though (they're determined in the moment, so not "predetermined," but they couldn't have gone any other way).

There's no issues with personal responsibility.  The consequence of understanding this fact means that we should empathize with people more.  But that doesn't mean we can't hold them accountable.  If there were all these causal determinants that caused them to do that, okay, it's not their "fault" in that we don't judge them for it, but we still hold them accountable because that in itself is a determining cause for future events.  Our society works fine with understanding people aren't to blame for their actions, but still need to be held accountable for them, for the sake of preventing others from doing the same, if it causes harm.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: 2lazy2retire on October 06, 2016, 08:21:03 AM
I don't think delving into a philosophical discussion of free will is necessary. If people of below-average intelligence can't simply "choose" to be geniuses, is it really that implausible that people of below-average work ethic can't simply "choose" to be motivated?
If nobody can choose anything, then there our entire society (which is heavily built upon the concept of personal responsibility) kinda falls apart.

As a hardcore determinist, I couldn't disagree more.  This is a fallacy put forth by people who don't actually understand free will or determinism, and say silly things like "if one has no free will, we can't hold them accountable!" which is just ridiculous.  I'd be happy to discuss in a free will thread, but I couldn't let this statement pass unchallenged.  It's simply not true.

I for one, would love to hear your argument on this matter.  My tendencies lean towards believing that things are predetermined, but have run into some issues reconciling this with the concept of personal responsibility.

There is still a place for personal responsibility in so much as holding someone accountable for their choices gives them the opportunity to make better choices in the future. We should never just give up and say "its all out of our control". Take 2 alcoholics and put them through rehab, one may come out reformed having used the opportunity to change that society had afforded him, the other back on the sauce in a week, if we had done nothing both are still drinking??.  - societal expectations have their place but ultimately we are all going to make different choices each and every day - what I want to know is why we make the choices we do. ( at the risk of sounding like a child who keeps saying "but why")
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 06, 2016, 08:24:25 AM
There is still a place for personal responsibility in so much as holding someone accountable for their choices gives them the opportunity to make better choices in the future.

This too; the punishment can be a cause for future actions of that person (I was thinking in an extreme case of something like life incarceration or even the death penalty), but future deterrence and example to others are still both valid reasons for punishment.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: ender on October 06, 2016, 08:40:05 AM
I for one, would love to hear your argument on this matter.  My tendencies lean towards believing that things are predetermined, but have run into some issues reconciling this with the concept of personal responsibility.

Even if they are 100% predetermined, you still don't know what they will be, and so in the moment you have to live as if they are not 100% predetermined.

In other words, whether or not they are 100% or 0% predetermined has minimal impact on your actual ability to effect change in your life. It ultimately doesn't matter whether or not the changes you do are 100% or 75% or 0% "your" choice or just "following" how your predetermined plan predicted.

Regardless of where that percentage falls, in the moment you don't know it, which means you effectively should live as if it's 100% your choice.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cathy on October 06, 2016, 08:49:18 AM
The nature of free will is one of the least interesting discussions I can think of, because there are only two possibilities that are consistent with materialism: Either everything is determined mechanically, or everything is completely random. From our perspective, those two possibilities are completely indistinguishable, so it's impossible to have an intelligent debate about which one is "correct" -- in fact, a verificationist would say that it is a mistake to even say that one is correct to the exclusion of the other because of the impossibility of verifying either way.

I'm not actually sure what people mean when they say that they think "free will" exists, but as best I can tell, it seems to be a statement that there is a mystical mechanism such as souls, qualia, or other religious vector, which overrides the normal laws of physics by causing physical effects without a physical source (which is in violation of the first law of thermodynamics). I have yet to hear any conception of "free will" that is consistent with materialism unless that conception is just determinism or randomness (either of which can be argued to be free will).

Put another way, the debate has three positions: "determinism", "randomness", and "mysticism".

When I propose that a particular event is a person's "choice", I express no view on which of the three possibilities is accurate; I don't even express a view on whether it makes say to say that any one of them is accurate. Instead, the only thing I mean to claim is that the chain of physical events that lead to the event has its proximate physical origin inside that person's body. Please substitute that definition whenever I mention or have mentioned "choice".
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: 2lazy2retire on October 06, 2016, 08:54:07 AM
The nature of free will is one of the least interesting discussions I can think of, because there are only two possibilities that are consistent with materialism: Either everything is determined mechanically, or everything is completely random. From our perspective, those two possibilities are completely indistinguishable, so it's impossible to have an intelligent debate about which one is "correct" -- in fact, a verificationist would say that it is a mistake to even say that one is correct to the exclusion of the other because of the impossibility of verifying either way.

I'm not actually sure what people mean when they say that they think "free will" exists, but as best I can tell, it seems to be a statement that there is a mystical mechanism such as souls, qualia, or other religious vector, which overrides the normal laws of physics by causing physical effects without a physical source (which is in violation of the first law of thermodynamics). I have yet to hear any conception of "free will" that is consistent with materialism unless that conception is just determinism or randomness (either of which can be argued to be free will).

Put another way, the debate has three positions: "determinism", "randomness", and "mysticism".

When I propose that a particular event is a person's "choice", I express no view on which of the three possibilities is accurate; I don't even express a view on whether it makes say to say that any one of them is accurate. Instead, the only thing I mean to claim is that the chain of physical events that lead to the event has its proximate physical origin inside that person's body. Please substitute that definition whenever I mention or have mentioned "choice".

For something you find uninteresting you seem to have given it a bit of thought ;)

I agree  "that the chain of physical events that lead to the event has its proximate physical origin inside that person's body." - but what triggers the chain of events in one person to differ from that of another leading to very different outcomes? or in other words what makes us make the choices we do?  - I apologize for what may be a simplistic view of things but it's the only view that makes sense to me.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: cheapass on October 06, 2016, 09:01:10 AM
As someone mentioned, it takes hard work, talent, and luck to be successful.  Obviously, only one of the 3 is within one's control.   Do the math.

You know, it's amazing. The harder I work and the more I plan things, the luckier I seem to be.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: 2lazy2retire on October 06, 2016, 09:09:02 AM
As someone mentioned, it takes hard work, talent, and luck to be successful.  Obviously, only one of the 3 is within one's control.   Do the math.

You know, it's amazing. The harder I work and the more I plan things, the luckier I seem to be.

Nothing amazing about you, you were just wired to work harder - others were not. But not too hard, I mean what are you doing on here browsing the internet when you could be working even harder? - bad choices eh :)
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Shor on October 06, 2016, 09:11:07 AM
As someone mentioned, it takes hard work, talent, and luck to be successful.  Obviously, only one of the 3 is within one's control.   Do the math.

You know, it's amazing. The harder I work and the more I plan things, the luckier I seem to be.

Nothing amazing about you, you were just wired to work harder - others were not. But not too hard, I mean what are you doing on here browsing the internet when you could be working even harder? - bad choices eh :)
They're just working on reaching the illustrious 'Walrus' status.... not very hard though it seems... hmmm..
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: cheapass on October 06, 2016, 09:19:27 AM
Nothing amazing about you, you were just wired to work harder - others were not. But not too hard, I mean what are you doing on here browsing the internet when you could be working even harder? - bad choices eh :)

I've determined that the utility I derive from my luckyness is at the maximum (considering effort required) so the marginal utility of an additional unit of luck is negative :)

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cathy on October 06, 2016, 09:29:47 AM
For something you find uninteresting you seem to have given it a bit of thought ;)

I agree  "that the chain of physical events that lead to the event has its proximate physical origin inside that person's body." - but what triggers the chain of events in one person to differ from that of another leading to very different outcomes? or in other words what makes us make the choices we do?  - I apologize for what may be a simplistic view of things but it's the only view that makes sense to me.

The human body is basically a computer with certain peripherals. The physical reason why people make different choices is one of or some combination of:

If your point is that, a priori, different people have a different difficulty in reaching success, whether due to different algorithms running in their body, different random variable outcomes, or different souls, then that point is not only obvious, but something I've already conceded (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/wealth-of-people-in-their-30s-has-'halved-in-a-decade'/msg1253981/#msg1253981) and that is not relevant to my argument in this thread. I fully agree that life is more difficult for some people than others. I also agree that some people will be running software that makes life more painful, more lonely, more barren, and overall more difficult.

I think the problem here is that some people assume that the personal responsibility rhetoric that I like to use is rooted in some sort of privilege, but that is not the case. Au contraire, the purpose of that rhetoric is to act as an additional input into the systems of people reading this thread, thus potentially giving those people a better chance of success at becoming millionaires by 30. In other words, my purpose for participation threads like this is altruistic. I can't speak for anyone else who may have participated.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 06, 2016, 09:34:54 AM
I think the problem here is that some people assume that the personal responsibility rhetoric that I like to use is rooted in some sort of privilege, but that is not the case. Au contraire, the purpose of that rhetoric is to act as an additional input into the systems of people reading this thread, thus potentially giving those people a better chance of success at becoming millionaires by 30. In other words, my purpose for participation threads like this is altruistic. I can't speak for anyone else who may have participated.

So you don't believe the personal responsibility things you type, you just type them in the hopes that they'll allow you to control the behavior of others?

:P
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Chris22 on October 06, 2016, 09:36:49 AM
As someone mentioned, it takes hard work, talent, and luck to be successful.  Obviously, only one of the 3 is within one's control.   Do the math.

You know, it's amazing. The harder I work and the more I plan things, the luckier I seem to be.

There were two instances where I was extremely lucky:

1.  Born to affluent parents in the US who emphasized hard work and education
2.  Graduated from college in 2004 in a time of relative economic prosperity

Almost everything else has been the result of hard work and planning, such as having specifically chosen a college major with lots of opportunities, intentionally chosen jobs that will give diverse experiences that will be valuable to my career, choosing to live in an area with lots of opportunities, deciding to spend my free time going back to school for an advanced degree, etc etc.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 06, 2016, 09:38:57 AM
As someone mentioned, it takes hard work, talent, and luck to be successful.  Obviously, only one of the 3 is within one's control.   Do the math.

You know, it's amazing. The harder I work and the more I plan things, the luckier I seem to be.

There were two instances where I was extremely lucky:

1.  Born to affluent parents in the US who emphasized hard work and education
2.  Graduated from college in 2004 in a time of relative economic prosperity

Almost everything else has been the result of hard work and planning, such as having specifically chosen a college major with lots of opportunities, intentionally chosen jobs that will give diverse experiences that will be valuable to my career, choosing to live in an area with lots of opportunities, deciding to spend my free time going back to school for an advanced degree, etc etc.

I didn't know you were a gay black woman, Chris.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Cathy on October 06, 2016, 09:42:13 AM
So you don't believe the personal responsibility things you type, you just type them in the hopes that they'll allow you to control the behavior of others?

Not quite.

A more accurate way of putting is that it's conceivable, even likely, that some people's actions are determined by algorithms that place a lot of weight on whether, in their mind, it's possible for them to do something. If we let those people know that, in fact, something is within their control and ability, the algorithms governing their actions may take that into account and then they may actually be able to do those things. After that happens, the original claims that I made will end up being true in a self-fulfilling way.

Or to say it a more artful, but less parsable, way: By promoting personal responsibility, we can actually have the effect of creating personal responsibility. The difference between somebody making bad choices and somebody making good choices could be that one of them didn't believe that it was possible to make the good choices, and we can change that.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 06, 2016, 09:43:06 AM
I didn't know you were a gay black woman, Chris.

Not to mention all the disabilities she overcame, both physical and mental (reading and speech disabilities are no joke).
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 06, 2016, 09:45:07 AM
So you don't believe the personal responsibility things you type, you just type them in the hopes that they'll allow you to control the behavior of others?

Not quite.

A more accurate way of putting is that it's conceivable, even likely, that some people's actions are determined by algorithms that place a lot of weight on whether, in their mind, it's possible for them to do something. If we let those people know that, in fact, something is within their control and ability, the algorithms governing their actions may take that into account and then they may actually be able to do those things. After that happens, the original claims that I made will end up being true in a self-fulfilling way.

Or to say it a more artful, but less parsable, way: By promoting personal responsibility, we can actually have the effect of creating personal responsibility. The difference between somebody making bad choices and somebody making good choices could be that one of them didn't believe that it was possible to make the good choices, and we can change that.

I would further add that even if we don't have free will, we feel like we do, and we must necessarily act like we do.   We can use the determination information to our advantage though, especially when trying to cultivate empathy for others ("if I was in their same circumstances, with the same background, parents, beliefs, experiences, etc. etc., I'd be acting exactly as they are").
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Chris22 on October 06, 2016, 09:45:50 AM
As someone mentioned, it takes hard work, talent, and luck to be successful.  Obviously, only one of the 3 is within one's control.   Do the math.

You know, it's amazing. The harder I work and the more I plan things, the luckier I seem to be.

There were two instances where I was extremely lucky:

1.  Born to affluent parents in the US who emphasized hard work and education
2.  Graduated from college in 2004 in a time of relative economic prosperity

Almost everything else has been the result of hard work and planning, such as having specifically chosen a college major with lots of opportunities, intentionally chosen jobs that will give diverse experiences that will be valuable to my career, choosing to live in an area with lots of opportunities, deciding to spend my free time going back to school for an advanced degree, etc etc.

I didn't know you were a gay black woman, Chris.

???  I don't get the reference.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: dignam on October 06, 2016, 09:45:55 AM
My gosh, this thread is a perfect example of why I sparingly visit this site...so much complaining, personal attacks and butt hurt all around.

Millennials blaming Boomers for the recent recession(s) because of their "lust for more".  Boomers using the tried and true "younger generation is just lazy and entitled".  I mean, come on...

Take what you will from the OP's data.  Placing blame does absolutely nothing to help anyone.

I can also add my anecdote about how I graduated college in 2009 during probably the absolute worst time to look for a job.  But really, who cares?

This thread and site should be about providing insight and advice to help people achieve the financial standing they want.  It helped me see that even though I wasn't dealt a great hand in terms of timing, I still made boneheaded decisions financially after college.  What good does placing blame do?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 06, 2016, 09:46:19 AM
So you don't believe the personal responsibility things you type, you just type them in the hopes that they'll allow you to control the behavior of others?

Not quite.

A more accurate way of putting is that it's conceivable, even likely, that some people's actions are determined by algorithms that place a lot of weight on whether, in their mind, it's possible for them to do something. If we let those people know that, in fact, something is within their control and ability, the algorithms governing their actions may take that into account and then they may actually be able to do those things. After that happens, the original claims that I made will end up being true in a self-fulfilling way.

Or to say it a more artful, but less parsable, way: By promoting personal responsibility, we can actually have the effect of creating personal responsibility. The difference between somebody making bad choices and somebody making good choices could be that one of them didn't believe that it was possible to make the good choices, and we can change that.

Thanks for this reply.  It really makes your frame of mind and argument clear to me.  This and your previous post have given me a lot to think about.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 06, 2016, 09:48:52 AM
As someone mentioned, it takes hard work, talent, and luck to be successful.  Obviously, only one of the 3 is within one's control.   Do the math.

You know, it's amazing. The harder I work and the more I plan things, the luckier I seem to be.

There were two instances where I was extremely lucky:

1.  Born to affluent parents in the US who emphasized hard work and education
2.  Graduated from college in 2004 in a time of relative economic prosperity

Almost everything else has been the result of hard work and planning, such as having specifically chosen a college major with lots of opportunities, intentionally chosen jobs that will give diverse experiences that will be valuable to my career, choosing to live in an area with lots of opportunities, deciding to spend my free time going back to school for an advanced degree, etc etc.

I didn't know you were a gay black woman, Chris.

???  I don't get the reference.

If you were born a straight white man with no physical or mental handicaps, you were extremely lucky as well.  You seemed to have left these benefits off your list of lucky things.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: Chris22 on October 06, 2016, 09:50:04 AM
As someone mentioned, it takes hard work, talent, and luck to be successful.  Obviously, only one of the 3 is within one's control.   Do the math.

You know, it's amazing. The harder I work and the more I plan things, the luckier I seem to be.

There were two instances where I was extremely lucky:

1.  Born to affluent parents in the US who emphasized hard work and education
2.  Graduated from college in 2004 in a time of relative economic prosperity

Almost everything else has been the result of hard work and planning, such as having specifically chosen a college major with lots of opportunities, intentionally chosen jobs that will give diverse experiences that will be valuable to my career, choosing to live in an area with lots of opportunities, deciding to spend my free time going back to school for an advanced degree, etc etc.

I didn't know you were a gay black woman, Chris.

???  I don't get the reference.

If you were born a straight white man with no physical or mental handicaps, you were extremely lucky as well.  You seemed to have left these benefits off your list of lucky things.

Fair enough, lump them in with #1, it's the same principle.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: cheapass on October 06, 2016, 09:51:16 AM
If you were born a straight white man with no physical or mental handicaps, you were extremely lucky as well.  You seemed to have left these benefits off your list of lucky things.

Quite true. We should penalize him in some manner to level the playing field. Maybe deny him entry to university based on his race?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: GuitarStv on October 06, 2016, 09:58:47 AM
If you were born a straight white man with no physical or mental handicaps, you were extremely lucky as well.  You seemed to have left these benefits off your list of lucky things.

Quite true. We should penalize him in some manner to level the playing field. Maybe deny him entry to university based on his race?

Of course not.  When examining our own success though, it's important to remember the many things that were given to us that helped us out.  Forgetting them, or pretending that they weren't important tends to lead down a path of indifference to the plight of others, or even outright cruelty in word and deed.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 06, 2016, 10:03:09 AM


My gosh, this thread is a perfect example of why I sparingly visit this site...so much complaining, personal attacks and butt hurt all around.

Millennials blaming Boomers for the recent recession(s) because of their "lust for more".  Boomers using the tried and true "younger generation is just lazy and entitled".  I mean, come on...

Take what you will from the OP's data.  Placing blame does absolutely nothing to help anyone.

One can recognize and be grateful for one's privileges, or disadvantages, without placing blame or complaining.

It's interesting to look at the state of the world, postulate on why things are the way they are, and how we can improve them.  Coming up with explanations for this isn't "placing blame."

This is a case of seeing what you expect to see, IMO.


If you were born a straight white man with no physical or mental handicaps, you were extremely lucky as well.  You seemed to have left these benefits off your list of lucky things.

Quite true. We should penalize him in some manner to level the playing field. Maybe deny him entry to university based on his race?

No one said anything about leveling a playing field, but when listing advantages to leave off some big ones (race and gender) seem pretty important.

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: ender on October 06, 2016, 10:34:59 AM
My gosh, this thread is a perfect example of why I sparingly visit this site...so much complaining, personal attacks and butt hurt all around.

Millennials blaming Boomers for the recent recession(s) because of their "lust for more".  Boomers using the tried and true "younger generation is just lazy and entitled".  I mean, come on...

Take what you will from the OP's data.  Placing blame does absolutely nothing to help anyone.

I can also add my anecdote about how I graduated college in 2009 during probably the absolute worst time to look for a job.  But really, who cares?

This thread and site should be about providing insight and advice to help people achieve the financial standing they want.  It helped me see that even though I wasn't dealt a great hand in terms of timing, I still made boneheaded decisions financially after college.  What good does placing blame do?

Overreaction much?

I've found this to be one of the most intellectually stimulating discussions I've participated in on these forums in quite some time.

Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: 2lazy2retire on October 06, 2016, 10:48:55 AM
So you don't believe the personal responsibility things you type, you just type them in the hopes that they'll allow you to control the behavior of others?

Not quite.

A more accurate way of putting is that it's conceivable, even likely, that some people's actions are determined by algorithms that place a lot of weight on whether, in their mind, it's possible for them to do something. If we let those people know that, in fact, something is within their control and ability, the algorithms governing their actions may take that into account and then they may actually be able to do those things. After that happens, the original claims that I made will end up being true in a self-fulfilling way.

Or to say it a more artful, but less parsable, way: By promoting personal responsibility, we can actually have the effect of creating personal responsibility. The difference between somebody making bad choices and somebody making good choices could be that one of them didn't believe that it was possible to make the good choices, and we can change that.

So the function of a civilized society should be to make people aware of the choices available, holding them accountable for those choices in so much as it helps not to repeat them, while all the time realizing that neither society or the individual may have control over the choices that get made ?
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: EscapeVelocity2020 on October 06, 2016, 11:15:26 AM
So you don't believe the personal responsibility things you type, you just type them in the hopes that they'll allow you to control the behavior of others?

Not quite.

A more accurate way of putting is that it's conceivable, even likely, that some people's actions are determined by algorithms that place a lot of weight on whether, in their mind, it's possible for them to do something. If we let those people know that, in fact, something is within their control and ability, the algorithms governing their actions may take that into account and then they may actually be able to do those things. After that happens, the original claims that I made will end up being true in a self-fulfilling way.

Or to say it a more artful, but less parsable, way: By promoting personal responsibility, we can actually have the effect of creating personal responsibility. The difference between somebody making bad choices and somebody making good choices could be that one of them didn't believe that it was possible to make the good choices, and we can change that.

So the function of a civilized society should be to make people aware of the choices available, holding them accountable for those choices in so much as it helps not to repeat them, while all the time realizing that neither society or the individual may have control over the choices that get made ?

One of the more interesting aspects of living as an expat abroad in a few different countries, and having family in the UK and Australia, is that you get to see how different socieities function.  Americans are probably more blind than they realize to just how different our society is to the UK (and much less informed on current events on that side of the pond).  Since the article was written about UK wealth, I think we've missed some key discussion points that their economy has been in a quagmire for quite some time.  The Brexit event didn't happen in isolation, but it also isn't a sign of better things to come.  I also think that an outsized chunk of the difference between generations NW comes from homeownership and investments and has very little to do with increased consumption or less income.   
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: teen persuasion on October 07, 2016, 07:04:22 AM
So you don't believe the personal responsibility things you type, you just type them in the hopes that they'll allow you to control the behavior of others?

Not quite.

A more accurate way of putting is that it's conceivable, even likely, that some people's actions are determined by algorithms that place a lot of weight on whether, in their mind, it's possible for them to do something. If we let those people know that, in fact, something is within their control and ability, the algorithms governing their actions may take that into account and then they may actually be able to do those things. After that happens, the original claims that I made will end up being true in a self-fulfilling way.

Or to say it a more artful, but less parsable, way: By promoting personal responsibility, we can actually have the effect of creating personal responsibility. The difference between somebody making bad choices and somebody making good choices could be that one of them didn't believe that it was possible to make the good choices, and we can change that.

So the function of a civilized society should be to make people aware of the choices available, holding them accountable for those choices in so much as it helps not to repeat them, while all the time realizing that neither society or the individual may have control over the choices that get made ?

One of the more interesting aspects of living as an expat abroad in a few different countries, and having family in the UK and Australia, is that you get to see how different socieities function.  Americans are probably more blind than they realize to just how different our society is to the UK (and much less informed on current events on that side of the pond).  Since the article was written about UK wealth, I think we've missed some key discussion points that their economy has been in a quagmire for quite some time.  The Brexit event didn't happen in isolation, but it also isn't a sign of better things to come.  I also think that an outsized chunk of the difference between generations NW comes from homeownership and investments and has very little to do with increased consumption or less income.   

I think that even within the U.S. there are different local economies and societies, and I learn of them thru forums like this one.  The economies that many describe where $100k salary jobs are plentiful and common to achieve are completely foreign to me, regardless of education.  Sometimes the industry doesn't exist here, or just doesn't command the extreme salaries here that seems normal elsewhere.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: ender on October 07, 2016, 07:11:20 AM
Honestly a huge difference in that perception is cost of living and its one that people often forget to consider.

$100k in SF/Seattle is a lot different than $100k in the Midwest.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: teen persuasion on October 07, 2016, 07:28:38 AM
It's about college major choices, mobility and willingness to move around for income mainly.  At 34 currently almost everyone I am friends with earns 6 figures except the teachers and liberal arts majors.

Have you talked to the average American?   Avg American is an idiot!  How the hell is he/she supposed to get through a major like math, finance, engineering, etc?  That's the most common path to getting to $100K by age 30.   This is not even mentioning other factors. 

I think some of you guys live in a bubble.  What appears to be easy to me and you is not so easy for most other people.         

And again personal choices.  Yes the average American is an idiot, but you know whose fault that is, that individuals (barring of course those with disabilities and probably below poverty level individuals).  With the Internet nowadays, and free classes on everything from how to fix your car to your house to free lessons in programming it is their personal choice to remain an idiot.  Libraries are free, and provide free internet, and most schools have both of those things.  Learn something that someone else wants and teach yourself ways to make it better.

You don't like working in McDonalds, you don't like being a cashier in Walmart...do something about it instead of whine that it's not fair or not average.  The US by and large, has a consumeristic spending problem, NOT a lack of opportunity problem especially for those in the middle class.

Had to comment on this one, since you so nicely mentioned "free" libraries.  Not everyone can educate themselves up to high salaries.  Some jobs just never pay that well, regardless of the education required.  Think about the consequences of everyone increasing their salaries to $100k - the costs get passed on.

My "free" library's entire budget is $103k.  Book budget, utilities, subscription services, ALMs fees, supplies, and yes personnel costs.  How much would our tax need to increase to pay each of our staff $100k annually?  How much would our ALMs fees increase when Central's staff also earns $100k each?  And so on.  Now, would the library tax on the school tax bill still be ~$25 for an average home, or would it be many multiples more?  What about the farmers, whose library tax is higher than average, since it's based on property value (we're a rural area, and it's a bone of contention)?  Pass it on as a cost of doing business, in higher food prices, naturally.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: cerat0n1a on October 07, 2016, 09:04:37 AM
One of the more interesting aspects of living as an expat abroad in a few different countries, and having family in the UK and Australia, is that you get to see how different socieities function.  Americans are probably more blind than they realize to just how different our society is to the UK (and much less informed on current events on that side of the pond).  Since the article was written about UK wealth, I think we've missed some key discussion points that their economy has been in a quagmire for quite some time.  The Brexit event didn't happen in isolation, but it also isn't a sign of better things to come.  I also think that an outsized chunk of the difference between generations NW comes from homeownership and investments and has very little to do with increased consumption or less income.   

Spot on. It's been interesting to see how far from the original post the thread has gone. The economic circumstances for people of my age are massively different to those 10 or 20 years younger, because of housing, pensions & university. Nothing to do with iPhones etc.

Anyone in Britain who is old enough to have owned a house over the past couple of decades has had a huge boost to their NW for not much effort.

The house I bought for £75k in 1999 would go for well over £300k now, meanwhile the FTSE-100 is at the same level it was in 1999. Houseprice rises have massively outstripped inflation. The population of the country has increased significantly, but relatively few new houses are built. Not many people in their twenties or early thirties own a home in the south of England.

A further big difference is pension provision. People aged 50+ often have company or government pensions which paid out a percentage of final salary and were typically hugely more generous than the offer today, almost all such schemes are closed to new entrants.

Finally, people of my generation received a free university education - our fees were paid and we received a grant for living costs. Being frugal and working during my degree meant that I finished my degree with cash in the bank. Today's graduates will be starting out at least £50k in debt.

One can make the point that times were much harder when I was a child - the house I lived when I started school had no heating and no inside toilet, three children sharing a bedroom. That would be considered unsuitable for human habitation in the UK today. Nevertheless, it is indisputable that we have had a free ride in comparison to younger people.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: EscapeVelocity2020 on October 07, 2016, 02:17:16 PM
Thanks for the encouragement cerat0n1a (if that's your username, I shudder to think what the password is :).  One other thing I heard about in the UK was that folks were converting their garage into living space and seeing tremendous ROI.  That trend has probably played out by now, but seemed like a nice one-time boost for the homeowner class this past decade.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: kite on October 07, 2016, 05:17:42 PM
The salaried earning market is practically a zero-sum game. Whatever you earn, someone else does not.

Same goes for the ideas market. You can't invent something that already exists.
Those are extraordinary claims.

What I mean is that if you earn a salary, someone else is not earning it. Fact, when companies outsource positions to India, the people whose jobs are outsourced lose said jobs. Besides, I said practically. There exists some jobs where you create value.

I don't know how you can disagree with the second paragraph. Maybe you have a time traveling machine?

This.
Back when everyone had a good enough job to become a Millionaire, the good jobs hadn't yet been outsourced.  And by "everyone" we really meant [the white, male fraction of ]everyone over here, not those Asians over there.  And what happened because so many jobs went over there is that fewer people over there starved to death.  In the generation since average wealth here dipped a bit, it skyrocketed over there.  The metrics being compared here are selectively excluding some vital parts of the story.
I'm not insensitive to the plight of GenY in the west.  It's pretty dismal in certain places no matter how educated because the competition has changed for them.  In addition to globalization, there is another demographic item: life expectancy.  Old folks are hanging around longer, hanging onto the wealth they've got.  And some of them are even hanging onto jobs.  Law and Academia are famously full of people who are productively plugging away at it in their 60s and 70s, never ceding opportunity to younger folks who have the same level of drive and education.  Look at Queen Elizabeth never letting her son ascend to the throne for the most famous example. 
Prior generations in the West didn't face this competition. 
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: ender on October 07, 2016, 05:49:28 PM
The house I bought for £75k in 1999 would go for well over £300k now, meanwhile the FTSE-100 is at the same level it was in 1999. Houseprice rises have massively outstripped inflation. The population of the country has increased significantly, but relatively few new houses are built. Not many people in their twenties or early thirties own a home in the south of England.

Can we stop cherry picking "if you bought a house in <pretty much the worst time to have dumped tons of money into the market in the past 40 years> you would have way beat the market return!" dates?

What if you had bought the house in 2002? Or 1995? Suddenly a very different picture.

I mean I get it. Houses might be more expensive compared to market returns. But picking some of the worst possible times to have bought houses is just intellectually dishonest.

Frankly, people get lucky and unlucky based on when they make major life decisions like buying a house. Plenty of people have bought houses and lost crazy amounts of money on them by having unlucky timing, too.  Some poor chap who bought a house in 2007 probably still has a negative real return on housing, even in the UK and even though "housing prices have massively outstripped inflation."

Quote
One can make the point that times were much harder when I was a child - the house I lived when I started school had no heating and no inside toilet, three children sharing a bedroom. That would be considered unsuitable for human habitation in the UK today. Nevertheless, it is indisputable that we have had a free ride in comparison to younger people.

It is indisputable?

No, it's because older generations were willing to deal with... not having much money by... not wanting crazy expensive lifestyles at age 22 out of college. You grew up in a house with 3 kids sharing a bedroom. How many of these poor millennials having such a rough lifestyle now would even consider that? Oh right. NONE OF THEM. How many families of 5 living in a 2 bedroom house do you know?

It really frustrates me when people confuse lifestyle inflation through standards inflation with hardship.


If every generation's expectation is a better standard of life than their parents' generation life will always be harder.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 07, 2016, 06:04:32 PM
If every generation's expectation is a better standard of life than their parents' generation life will always be harder.

I don't follow.  I could maybe see this argument being true in the case that the expectation isn't met, and even then I wouldn't say it's harder, I would say that their view on it is coming from a disappointed viewpoint, so naturally it seems worse.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: ender on October 07, 2016, 06:10:08 PM
If every generation's expectation is a better standard of life than their parents' generation life will always be harder.

I don't follow.  I could maybe see this argument being true in the case that the expectation isn't met, and even then I wouldn't say it's harder, I would say that their view on it is coming from a disappointed viewpoint, so naturally it seems worse.

I guess what it comes down to is that most people try to achieve the lifestyle of their parents by the time they are 25 and are naturally disappointed. This feels particularly true in the "millennial" generation, which corresponds to a lot of the "life is so hard for you" sentiment.

I don't know how true it was in the "boomer" generation. Maybe it was equally as true then as it is now. I don't know.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: use2betrix on October 07, 2016, 06:30:46 PM
Not many people get rich when they don't hold themselves accountable for their successes and failures, which is a trend I always see amongst these threads about higher income earners.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 07, 2016, 06:52:32 PM
If every generation's expectation is a better standard of life than their parents' generation life will always be harder.

I don't follow.  I could maybe see this argument being true in the case that the expectation isn't met, and even then I wouldn't say it's harder, I would say that their view on it is coming from a disappointed viewpoint, so naturally it seems worse.

I guess what it comes down to is that most people try to achieve the lifestyle of their parents by the time they are 25 and are naturally disappointed. This feels particularly true in the "millennial" generation, which corresponds to a lot of the "life is so hard for you" sentiment.

I don't know how true it was in the "boomer" generation. Maybe it was equally as true then as it is now. I don't know.

This idea (along with the seeing the best of friends' lives on social media making people unhappy) became a very popular theory a few years ago due to a few internet articles, and it makes sense at first blush.  I'm not sure I 100% buy it though.

I mean, yes, sure, in theory.  I just don't think the majority of people do this, and it's actually more millennial bashing.

Having it called out as a thing helped though, I think.  Easier to get perspective when you realize that.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: use2betrix on October 07, 2016, 07:00:15 PM
If every generation's expectation is a better standard of life than their parents' generation life will always be harder.

I don't follow.  I could maybe see this argument being true in the case that the expectation isn't met, and even then I wouldn't say it's harder, I would say that their view on it is coming from a disappointed viewpoint, so naturally it seems worse.

I guess what it comes down to is that most people try to achieve the lifestyle of their parents by the time they are 25 and are naturally disappointed. This feels particularly true in the "millennial" generation, which corresponds to a lot of the "life is so hard for you" sentiment.

I don't know how true it was in the "boomer" generation. Maybe it was equally as true then as it is now. I don't know.

Except for those that made more at 25 on their own than their parents ever made combined in their life.

This year, at 28, I have probably made 2x as much as my parents ever have in their life. Yet - they have bachelors and masters degrees and I only have an associates degree. My parents are the perfect example of boomers.

Again, it's there for those that want it. You may not always do what you love, live where you love, or work just 40 hr work weeks, but it can be done.

People are like "omg I only make 50k, but I chose a major I loved and will only live in one city and I won't work over 40 hrs a week."


Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 07, 2016, 07:16:14 PM
[Humblebrag]
...
People are like "omg I only make 50k, but I chose a major I loved and will only live in one city and I won't work over 40 hrs a week."

I chose a major I loved, a job I loved (not related to that major) and haven't regretted it for a second.

Money is just money.  The literal years of my life (4 of university, 8 of working) I would not trade for more money.

You can mock people who make that choice, but if I were doing it all over, I'd do it the same.

You may enjoy selling yourself for money, but not all of us do.  :)
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: cheapass on October 07, 2016, 07:26:34 PM
I chose a major I loved, a job I loved (not related to that major) and haven't regretted it for a second.

Money is just money.  The literal years of my life (4 of university, 8 of working) I would not trade for more money.

You can mock people who make that choice, but if I were doing it all over, I'd do it the same.

You may enjoy selling yourself for money, but not all of us do.  :)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that during your early working career, you weren't bitching and moaning about your situation and blaming those greedy 1%ers because you weren't living like a Kardashian right out of school.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: arebelspy on October 07, 2016, 07:53:51 PM
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that during your early working career, you weren't bitching and moaning about your situation and blaming those greedy 1%ers because you weren't living like a Kardashian right out of school.

I think the actual amount of people that do this is very, very small.

There are a large majority of us that recognize some problems with the current status quo, especially as it applies to wealth and income equality, but to paint everyone who vocalizes recognition of this problem as "bitching and moaning" is not correct, IMO.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: use2betrix on October 08, 2016, 03:11:17 AM
[Humblebrag]
...
People are like "omg I only make 50k, but I chose a major I loved and will only live in one city and I won't work over 40 hrs a week."

I chose a major I loved, a job I loved (not related to that major) and haven't regretted it for a second.

Money is just money.  The literal years of my life (4 of university, 8 of working) I would not trade for more money.

You can mock people who make that choice, but if I were doing it all over, I'd do it the same.

You may enjoy selling yourself for money, but not all of us do.  :)

You are a very rare exception. You also managed to retire in 8 years so of course there were no complaints about money lol.

Not everyone can make a ton of money doing something they truly enjoy, and often times it's a trade off. If someone decides to make that trade off, however, they probably shouldn't spend their time complaining about it or blaming others.
Title: Re: Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
Post by: cerat0n1a on October 08, 2016, 10:49:19 AM
What if you had bought the house in 2002? Or 1995? Suddenly a very different picture.

I mean I get it. Houses might be more expensive compared to market returns. But picking some of the worst possible times to have bought houses is just intellectually dishonest.


No - you're completely wrong. Just comparing the actual point when I did buy a house.

If you'd bought a house in the UK in 1995 or 2002, or indeed any other time in the past, your returns have significantly outstripped wages. The ratio of average (mean) house price to average (mean) full time earnings was 2.87 in 1995. It's 5.89 today. In London it's closer to 10. Unlike the US, our average wages have grown significantly ahead of price inflation in that time too. It's harder to do the comparison with the stock market (huge gearing/leverage available to buy a house in the form of mortgages) but for most middle class middle aged people in British almost all of their net worth is in the form of housing.

Quote
Some poor chap who bought a house in 2007 probably still has a negative real return on housing, even in the UK and even though "housing prices have massively outstripped inflation."

Again, you're assuming US experience translates to UK. 2007 was indeed a peak and you'd have been significantly down on your house by 2008, but again, by now, you're well ahead.

As a reminder, the original article linked by the OP is giving factual data about the fact that people in their 30s in the UK have on average half the net wealth of people the same age a decade ago. For anyone living here, that's a statement of the obvious. Things have got harder financially, on average for young people than they were for people my age.

I was a millionaire at thirty - got lucky with a tech start-up. Somebody who is thirty today could do the same. It's not that there aren't opportunities, or ways to save money. But it's a fact that young people in Britain are poorer on average than people the same age in the recent past.