Rising costs of everything........

[OG Goat Holder]

- Football tickets, hell ALL tickets, not to mention parking, concessions, etc.;
- Housing costs, with no end in sight - they even artificially raise interest rates and costs STILL stay high;
- Insurance - through the roof with no end in sight there either, fires/disasters;
- Groceries, no explanation needed;
- Restaurants - we all know they ain't bringing prices down once they go up;
- Even Netflix and streaming services.
- Oh yeah....and vehicles....holeeee shlt.

What are middle class folks to do? Seems like gas is the only thing that fluctuates but even still, it trends up. I sometimes wonder how folks like me are going to make it, especially our kids. If you don't get into the real estate market immediately, basically avoid all entertainment that involves sports, food and drink.......how do you get ahead? It's gotten ridiculous.

Is it going to be like Europe soon, when everybody has to live with parents due to housing? This cycle just continues and continues.

 

[Felonious Junk]

I would cancel your sixpack subscription. Will hate to see you go

 

[Seinfeld]

I’m just waiting for the day when the Netflix home screen asks if I want to tip their programmers before watching a show.

 

[pseudonym]

If your primary savings vehicle is bitcoin, everything gets cheaper over time.

 

[dorndawg]

- Football tickets, hell ALL tickets, not to mention parking, concessions, etc.;
- Housing costs, with no end in sight - they even artificially raise interest rates and costs STILL stay high;
- Insurance - through the roof with no end in sight there either, fires/disasters;
- Groceries, no explanation needed;
- Restaurants - we all know they ain't bringing prices down once they go up;
- Even Netflix and streaming services.
- Oh yeah....and vehicles....holeeee shlt.

What are middle class folks to do? Seems like gas is the only thing that fluctuates but even still, it trends up. I sometimes wonder how folks like me are going to make it, especially our kids. If you don't get into the real estate market immediately, basically avoid all entertainment that involves sports, food and drink.......how do you get ahead? It's gotten ridiculous.

Is it going to be like Europe soon, when everybody has to live with parents due to housing? This cycle just continues and continues.

 

[dorndawg]

I’m just waiting for the day when the Netflix home screen asks if I want to tip their programmers before watching a show.

Don't you dare give them ideas

 

[pseudonym]

 

[OG Goat Holder]

View attachment 749057

I get that we live in bigger houses, have a internet-connected supercomputer in our pockets, and drive cars that rival spaceships. But I don't 17 with Door Dash.

 

[ETK99]

Wait til that state income tax is eliminated. It'll save you a crap ton*****

 

[Anon1717806835]

View attachment 749057

This is it in a nutshell. Technology and convenance. **** cost more these days for same reason a Model T cost more than a horse and buggy in the early 1900's.

 

[WilCoDawg]

Everything is going up….except paychecks. Between out-of-control inflation and Covid causing prices to go up (and they never go down just like govt spending), it‘s a sad day trying to move one’s way up the income ladder. Hopefully things will change and improve quickly.

 

[Seinfeld]

I get that we live in bigger houses, have an internet-connected supercomputer in our pockets, and drive cars that rival spaceships. But I don't 17 with Door Dash.

Yeah, we use it every once in awhile on the weekend when I’ve already gotten into the bourbon, but it sure is a product that almost everyone seems to hate.

Restaurants don’t like it because it means that people aren’t coming in and buying drinks or tipping waiters. Customers don’t like it because your $40 tab turns into nearly $60 after all the fees. Then drivers get pissed when customers don’t tip enough due to already paying said fees and inflated menu prices.

 

[greenbean.sixpack]

- Football tickets, hell ALL tickets, not to mention parking, concessions, etc.;
- Housing costs, with no end in sight - they even artificially raise interest rates and costs STILL stay high;
- Insurance - through the roof with no end in sight there either, fires/disasters;
- Groceries, no explanation needed;
- Restaurants - we all know they ain't bringing prices down once they go up;
- Even Netflix and streaming services.
- Oh yeah....and vehicles....holeeee shlt.

What are middle class folks to do? Seems like gas is the only thing that fluctuates but even still, it trends up. I sometimes wonder how folks like me are going to make it, especially our kids. If you don't get into the real estate market immediately, basically avoid all entertainment that involves sports, food and drink.......how do you get ahead? It's gotten ridiculous.

Is it going to be like Europe soon, when everybody has to live with parents due to housing? This cycle just continues and continues.

Up through the 80s:
-Many families lived in a 1600sf ranch style home with 3br/2ba, not unusual for 6 or more family members
-No parent would have dreamed of everyone in the family have a $75/month cell phone
-Paying $5 daily for a cup of coffee was inconceivable
-Wasn't unusual for a family to have only one or two cars - and those were simple, inexpensive cars, no $100k SUVs
-Many folks didn't have cable
-Many homes had one TV
-Eating out was luxury - maybe once a week and that was fast food or a diner
-Vacations, if any, were simple and usually a long weekend
-Families packed a lunch when traveling
-Spending 100s of dollars/month on youth sports was unheard of
-Although young folks today think most moms back then didn't work, most of them did
-Many folks didn't have credit cards and those who did were wary of using them

I could go on and on. The reasons prices keep increasing is because people keep paying the prices. It would be easy to control, stop the frivolous spending. We've reached a point where this no longer "delayed gratification."

 

[thatsbaseball]

- Football tickets, hell ALL tickets, not to mention parking, concessions, etc.;
- Housing costs, with no end in sight - they even artificially raise interest rates and costs STILL stay high;
- Insurance - through the roof with no end in sight there either, fires/disasters;
- Groceries, no explanation needed;
- Restaurants - we all know they ain't bringing prices down once they go up;
- Even Netflix and streaming services.
- Oh yeah....and vehicles....holeeee shlt.

What are middle class folks to do? Seems like gas is the only thing that fluctuates but even still, it trends up. I sometimes wonder how folks like me are going to make it, especially our kids. If you don't get into the real estate market immediately, basically avoid all entertainment that involves sports, food and drink.......how do you get ahead? It's gotten ridiculous.

Is it going to be like Europe soon, when everybody has to live with parents due to housing? This cycle just continues and continues.

 

[pseudonym]

This is it in a nutshell. Technology and convenance. **** cost more these days for same reason a Model T cost more than a horse and buggy in the early 1900's.

Things get more expensive for this reason, too:

 

[PrimeDog]

Wait til that state income tax is eliminated. It'll save you a crap ton*****

And the blowhard governor whose nose is brown from Trump’s rectum wants to act like he’s “putting money in your pocket”.

What a savior. That state employee making 30k gets to save $900 a year in state tax while paying 12% sales tax to buy items in the Jackson metro and will probably never see sub $3 gas again.

 

[thatsbaseball]

Up through the 80s:
-Many families lived in a 1600sf ranch style home with 3br/2ba, not unusual for 6 or more family members
-No parent would have dreamed of everyone in the family have a $75/month cell phone
-Paying $5 daily for a cup of coffee was inconceivable
-Wasn't unusual for a family to have only one or two cars - and those were simple, inexpensive cars, no $100k SUVs
-Many folks didn't have cable
-Many homes had one TV
-Eating out was luxury - maybe once a week and that was fast food or a diner
-Vacations, if any, were simple and usually a long weekend
-Families packed a lunch when traveling
-Spending 100s of dollars/month on youth sports was unheard of
-Although young folks today think most moms back then didn't work, most of them did
-Many folks didn't have credit cards and those who did were wary of using them

I could go on and on. The reasons prices keep increasing is because people keep paying the prices. It would be easy to control, stop the frivolous spending. We've reached a point where this no longer "delayed gratification."

Bottled water is my economic barometer. When convenience stores can no longer get more for bottle water than some beers I'll know things are coming around.**

 

[greenbean.sixpack]

Bottled water is my economic barometer. When convenience stores can no longer get more for bottle water than some beers I'll know things are coming around.**

Great point! Most of it is bottled from the same municipal supply that tap water comes from. People are idiots.

 

[dorndawg]

Yeah, we use it every once in awhile on the weekend when I’ve already gotten into the bourbon, but it sure is a product that almost everyone seems to hate.

Restaurants don’t like it because it means that people aren’t coming in and buying drinks or tipping waiters. Customers don’t like it because your $40 tab turns into nearly $60 after all the fees. Then drivers get pissed when customers don’t tip enough due to already paying said fees and inflated menu prices.

I love door dash etc existing when I shouldn't be driving or I'm at home sick, but otherwise don't get how it stays in business. When it first came out a few years ago it seemed like it maybe cost 30% more than normal, but now it's more like double.

 

[patdog]

Up through the 80s:
-Many families lived in a 1600sf ranch style home with 3br/2ba, not unusual for 6 or more family members
-No parent would have dreamed of everyone in the family have a $75/month cell phone
-Paying $5 daily for a cup of coffee was inconceivable
-Wasn't unusual for a family to have only one or two cars
-Many folks didn't have cable
-Many homes had one TV
-Eating out was luxury - maybe once a week and that was fast food or a diner
-Vacations, if any, were simple and usually a long weekend
-Families packed a lunch when traveling
-Spending 100s of dollars/month on youth sports fans unheard of
-Although young folks today think most moms back then didn't work, most of them did
-Many folks didn't have credit cards and those who did were wary of using them

I could go on and on. The reasons prices keep increasing is because people keep pay the prices. It would be easy to control, stop the frivolous spending. We've reached a point where this no longer "delayed gratification."

And we thought we were living pretty well back then too. I would add that the one or two family cars were usually inexpensive small to medium size sedans, and not some massive $70,000 truck or SUV.

 

[theoriginalSALTYdog]

- Football tickets, hell ALL tickets, not to mention parking, concessions, etc.;
- Housing costs, with no end in sight - they even artificially raise interest rates and costs STILL stay high;
- Insurance - through the roof with no end in sight there either, fires/disasters;
- Groceries, no explanation needed;
- Restaurants - we all know they ain't bringing prices down once they go up;
- Even Netflix and streaming services.
- Oh yeah....and vehicles....holeeee shlt.

What are middle class folks to do? Seems like gas is the only thing that fluctuates but even still, it trends up. I sometimes wonder how folks like me are going to make it, especially our kids. If you don't get into the real estate market immediately, basically avoid all entertainment that involves sports, food and drink.......how do you get ahead? It's gotten ridiculous.

Is it going to be like Europe soon, when everybody has to live with parents due to housing? This cycle just continues and continues.

Gas should be going down soon. It's the crux of our economy and once that happens the price of commodities will start to drop or at least stabilize.

 

[PooPopsBaldHead]

I get that we live in bigger houses, have a internet-connected supercomputer in our pockets, and drive cars that rival spaceships. But I don't 17 with Door Dash.

This all I have for now

I don't have time to dig in anymore, at least not like I did in 2020 when I was sitting on my áss all the time. I really enjoy the subject and studied heavily on Milton Friedman and Volker when I was in B-School back in 09-10'.

I really wanted to do a deep dive on the asset inflation we had already seen since 2009. The manipulation of inflation numbers through things like OER and hedonic adjustments had kept it out of CPI. And most importantly, I was ringing the alarm about the massive inflation coming. I forgot the dude's username but he was very pro MMT and called me an inflationista etc.

So around this same time is when I started pumping real estate. Buy it all while you can sorta deal. Labor costs never go backwards. The lumber/building materials super cycle has just hit. We were at the bottom of a 10-12 year interest rate cycle that we may never see the likes of again. Regulation artificially adds to the cost to build every year. And the demographics were/are lining up horribly for manual labor to grow at the rate we need. I stand by that housing will never be as cheap as it was in 2020-21 again unless we are fighting our neighbors with sticks to eat their cats and dogs in a post apocalyptic scenario.

Anyhow, a lot of the problems started in 2009-10 when the banks got a lot of cheap money so things we finance like real estate and cars were already inflating before COVID. Then in March of 2020, with DJT in office, not Biden mind you... We told people to stay home and gave out 6-7 trillion dollars in enhanced unemployment, PPP, stimulus rounds 1&2, mortgage forbearance, student loan forbearance, and 2-3% interest rate mortgages. Biden takes the blame for inflation and he definitely threw kerosene on the fire with $3 trillion of his own handouts... But this was a campfire that Obama/Bush started in 2008-9 and Trump chunked $7 trillion worth of dried pallets on in 2020.

Anyhow, I was going to start a series of discussions in August of 2020, but nobody played along. I was a proponent of raising taxes at that time. We flooded the economy with too much money and needed to get it out of the system and higher taxes was the only way to do it with the benefit of curbing our growing deficit. Because unlike inflation, we can raise and lower taxes with some paper and ink. Inflation is a tax on the American people that is extremely difficult to stop once it starts and politicians almost always try to fix it by adding to the deficit, thus creating more inflation and increase national debt.

August 2020 Inflation Post

I still haven't wrapped my head around all the game theory of tariffs. Prices will rise overnight on American consumers, but there will be no more money supply out there. Headline CPI will increase and savings will decrease, but unless the tariffs are paired with tax cuts or spending increases, the deficit should lower as well.

I doubt we are capable of increasing domestic production at any significant level anytime soon so the onshoring of jobs would be minimal. Overall I hope tariffs are mainly being used as a trade negotiation tool and aren't implemented in a sweeping fashion. To what level they are, I think you don't necessarily cause true inflation, but will force consumers to buy less of certain items and dip further into personal savings. With true inflation, everything will go up in price and tariffs don't do that. So I don't see them as much inflationary, but they could possibly become recessionary as consumers become more austere and potential trade wars force layoffs from American businesses.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

Gas should be going down soon. It's the crux of our economy and once that happens the price of commodities will start to drop.

Nope.

You’re forgetting about summer gas when it’ll go up again.

 

[dudehead]

- Football tickets, hell ALL tickets, not to mention parking, concessions, etc.;
- Housing costs, with no end in sight - they even artificially raise interest rates and costs STILL stay high;
- Insurance - through the roof with no end in sight there either, fires/disasters;
- Groceries, no explanation needed;
- Restaurants - we all know they ain't bringing prices down once they go up;
- Even Netflix and streaming services.
- Oh yeah....and vehicles....holeeee shlt.

What are middle class folks to do? Seems like gas is the only thing that fluctuates but even still, it trends up. I sometimes wonder how folks like me are going to make it, especially our kids. If you don't get into the real estate market immediately, basically avoid all entertainment that involves sports, food and drink.......how do you get ahead? It's gotten ridiculous.

Is it going to be like Europe soon, when everybody has to live with parents due to housing? This cycle just continues and continues.

Just wait until the new tariffs kick in - you will be overjoyed then.

 

[dudehead]

This all I have for now

I don't have time to dig in anymore, at least not like I did in 2020 when I was sitting on my áss all the time. I really enjoy the subject and studied heavily on Milton Friedman and Volker when I was in B-School back in 09-10'.

I really wanted to do a deep dive on the asset inflation we had already seen since 2009. The manipulation of inflation numbers through things like OER and hedonic adjustments had kept it out of CPI. And most importantly, I was ringing the alarm about the massive inflation coming. I forgot the dude's username but he was very pro MMT and called me an inflationista etc.

So around this same time is when I started pumping real estate. Buy it all while you can sorta deal. Labor costs never go backwards. The lumber/building materials super cycle has just hit. We were at the bottom of a 10-12 year interest rate cycle that we may never see the likes of again. Regulation artificially adds to the cost to build every year. And the demographics were/are lining up horribly for manual labor to grow at the rate we need. I stand by that housing will never be as cheap as it was in 2020-21 again unless we are fighting our neighbors with sticks to eat their cats and dogs in a post apocalyptic scenario.

Anyhow, a lot of the problems started in 2009-10 when the banks got a lot of cheap money so things we finance like real estate and cars were already inflating before COVID. Then in March of 2020, with DJT in office, not Biden mind you... We told people to stay home and gave out 6-7 trillion dollars in enhanced unemployment, PPP, stimulus rounds 1&2, mortgage forbearance, student loan forbearance, and 2-3% interest rate mortgages. Biden takes the blame for inflation and he definitely threw kerosene on the fire with $3 trillion of his own handouts... But this was a campfire that Obama/Bush started in 2008-9 and Trump chunked $7 trillion worth of dried pallets on in 2020.

Anyhow, I was going to start a series of discussions in August of 2020, but nobody played along. I was a proponent of raising taxes at that time. We flooded the economy with too much money and needed to get it out of the system and higher taxes was the only way to do it with the benefit of curbing our growing deficit. Because unlike inflation, we can raise and lower taxes with some paper and ink. Inflation is a tax on the American people that is extremely difficult to stop once it starts and politicians almost always try to fix it by adding to the deficit, thus creating more inflation and increase national debt.

August 2020 Inflation Post

I still haven't wrapped my head around all the game theory of tariffs. Prices will rise overnight on American consumers, but there will be no more money supply out there. Headline CPI will increase and savings will decrease, but unless the tariffs are paired with tax cuts or spending increases, the deficit should lower as well.

I doubt we are capable of increasing domestic production at any significant level anytime soon so the onshoring of jobs would be minimal. Overall I hope tariffs are mainly being used as a trade negotiation tool and aren't implemented in a sweeping fashion. To what level they are, I think you don't necessarily cause true inflation, but will force consumers to buy less of certain items and dip further into personal savings. With true inflation, everything will go up in price and tariffs don't do that. So I don't see them as much inflationary, but they could possibly become recessionary as consumers become more austere and potential trade wars force layoffs from American businesses.

Read the above. This man knows what he's talking about.

 

[johnson86-1]

Things get more expensive for this reason, too:

With the exception of a few industries where the government distorts the market really badly (e.g., housing, healthcare, and education), that's practically the only reason things get more expensive.

 

[Xenomorph]

Not long ago I told my kids the story about when the cable company found two coax splitters in our house and began charging us for 2 extra cable drops in the house so my dad cancelled the service for a year.

Then I had to explain to them what coax is.

 

[greenbean.sixpack]

Up through the 80s:
-Many families lived in a 1600sf ranch style home with 3br/2ba, not unusual for 6 or more family members
-No parent would have dreamed of everyone in the family have a $75/month cell phone
-Paying $5 daily for a cup of coffee was inconceivable
-Wasn't unusual for a family to have only one or two cars - and those were simple, inexpensive cars, no $100k SUVs
-Many folks didn't have cable
-Many homes had one TV
-Eating out was luxury - maybe once a week and that was fast food or a diner
-Vacations, if any, were simple and usually a long weekend
-Families packed a lunch when traveling
-Spending 100s of dollars/month on youth sports was unheard of
-Although young folks today think most moms back then didn't work, most of them did
-Many folks didn't have credit cards and those who did were wary of using them

I could go on and on. The reasons prices keep increasing is because people keep paying the prices. It would be easy to control, stop the frivolous spending. We've reached a point where this no longer "delayed gratification."

Add pets and pet care on the list. Folks spend crazy amounts on their pets.

 

[pseudonym]

With the exception of a few industries where the government distorts the market really badly (e.g., housing, healthcare, and education), that's practically the only reason things get more expensive.

Some people want you to think it's really complicated, so you don't pay attention to the very simple and obvious explanation.

 

[johnson86-1]

Up through the 80s:
-Many families lived in a 1600sf ranch style home with 3br/2ba, not unusual for 6 or more family members
-No parent would have dreamed of everyone in the family have a $75/month cell phone
-Paying $5 daily for a cup of coffee was inconceivable
-Wasn't unusual for a family to have only one or two cars - and those were simple, inexpensive cars, no $100k SUVs
-Many folks didn't have cable
-Many homes had one TV
-Eating out was luxury - maybe once a week and that was fast food or a diner
-Vacations, if any, were simple and usually a long weekend
-Families packed a lunch when traveling
-Spending 100s of dollars/month on youth sports was unheard of
-Although young folks today think most moms back then didn't work, most of them did
-Many folks didn't have credit cards and those who did were wary of using them

I could go on and on. The reasons prices keep increasing is because people keep paying the prices. It would be easy to control, stop the frivolous spending. We've reached a point where this no longer "delayed gratification."

Most if not all of your bulleted items are true, but that is not why prices keep going up. That's lifestyle inflation. It's why people feel like they aren't doing better when based on inflation adjusted earnings, they should be doing better.

Prices are going up because we print money and the goal of our monetary policy is to cause slow and steady inflation. If people didn't spend money on those things, you'd see the price of other things go up as demand shifted to them because the money has to go somewhere. I think that partly explains what you see with P/E expansion in stocks and investment real estate. It's not that people are necessarily excited about paying twice as much for the same earnings, but we have had productivity gains and so more affluent people have money to spare, so the price of easily accessible investments like the S&P500 stocks or residential or commercial investment property go up compared to their earnings. Those investments only makes sense as long as there is continued inflation, because you are dependent on price appreciation to provide a return since the actual earnings are a terrible return. That's why you see properties sell with a <4 CAP and stocks without a compelling growth story still sell for a 25 PE ratio.

 

[dorndawg]

Add pets and pet care on the list. Folks spend crazy amounts on their pets.

Ok but dogs are cool. Most of this other stuff we're all vastly overpaying for is dork shiit.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

Some people want you to think it's really complicated, so you don't pay attention to the very simple and obvious explanation.

I don't really care that it's happening......I care about how to beat it. Or at least not be crippled by it.

And I don't have enough money to buy bitcoin.

 

[L4Dawg]

Gas should be going down soon. It's the crux of our economy and once that happens the price of commodities will start to drop or at least stabilize.

The futures market says it's going to slowly increase over the next few months.

 

[johnson86-1]

I don't really care that it's happening......I care about how to beat it. Or at least not be crippled by it.

And I don't have enough money to buy bitcoin.

The biggest pain free thing you can do to mitigate it is lock in a house you can stay in for a long time at a sub 3% interest rate in 2020/2021.

That's not super helpful advice at this point, so I would say the next most helpful thing is take advantage of categories where there have been significant quality adjustments. Biggest one to me is cars. You really can buy a decent used car with 100k miles on it at a reasonable price and for the next 50,000 miles, it will probably be as reliable and have more safety and bells and whistles than a brand new car from 20 years ago. There are other ones (e.g., electronics) that just aren't going to be that much of your household budget but to the extent you can avoid paying for the latest and greatest, it will help shave some inflation off.

Only other thing I would say is take advantage of knockoffs. You really can get generic/knock off versions of most things that are pretty decent. The challenge is sifting through the stuff that's cheap because it's crap and stuff that's cheap because it's not name brand and/or is simple. Clothes is a simple one though. Most of our outdoor stuff is Magellan. I can't tell the difference between it and it's comparable model columbia. Random example, but bag chairs. Was looking at some recently and had the option to buy some models in the $70 to $75 range that either rocked or reclined or had what appeared to be reasonably sturdy side tables all the way down to a $7 model that was probably close to disposable based on how flimsy it seemed. There was one for $15 that seemed pretty sturdy and was comfortable enough. Pretty sure a comparable bag chair was $15 or $20 ten years ago too.

 

[BTCMoonBoy]

If your primary savings vehicle is bitcoin, everything gets cheaper over time.

View attachment 749043

some people ngmi

 

[BTCMoonBoy]

Things get more expensive for this reason, too:

politicans gonna politic

 

[dorndawg]

The biggest pain free thing you can do to mitigate it is lock in a house you can stay in for a long time at a sub 3% interest rate in 2020/2021.

That's not super helpful advice at this point, so I would say the next most helpful thing is take advantage of categories where there have been significant quality adjustments. Biggest one to me is cars. You really can buy a decent used car with 100k miles on it at a reasonable price and for the next 50,000 miles, it will probably be as reliable and have more safety and bells and whistles than a brand new car from 20 years ago. There are other ones (e.g., electronics) that just aren't going to be that much of your household budget but to the extent you can avoid paying for the latest and greatest, it will help shave some inflation off.

Only other thing I would say is take advantage of knockoffs. You really can get generic/knock off versions of most things that are pretty decent. The challenge is sifting through the stuff that's cheap because it's crap and stuff that's cheap because it's not name brand and/or is simple. Clothes is a simple one though. Most of our outdoor stuff is Magellan. I can't tell the difference between it and it's comparable model columbia. Random example, but bag chairs. Was looking at some recently and had the option to buy some models in the $70 to $75 range that either rocked or reclined or had what appeared to be reasonably sturdy side tables all the way down to a $7 model that was probably close to disposable based on how flimsy it seemed. There was one for $15 that seemed pretty sturdy and was comfortable enough. Pretty sure a comparable bag chair was $15 or $20 ten years ago too.

For a variety of reasons, I've quit using amazon prime and have taken it off my phone. I'd gotten into a bad habit of every time I thought I needed or wanted whatever I'd order it on prime. I've almost made it into a little game, figuring out how to use something I already have around the house. Most of us grew up with "Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without"; I'm gonna try to bring it back.

To your point, yep: a fixed rate mortgage and a costco/sams membership (used judiciously) are the average person's 2 best weapons against inflation.

 

[mstateglfr]

View attachment 749052

Reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon...

 

[615dawg]

Having kids that are at or nearing college aged has opened my eyes to something that has changed dramatically over the past generation (25-30 years).

When I moved into Cresswell Hall in the mid-90s, a selling point for that building was that they had just got central air conditioning. Rice Hall, the women's dorm, still had window units. And don't get me started about McKee and Sessums. But the common timeline for living in Starkville usually went like this.

Dorm for freshman year, maybe sophomore.
Apartment or Greek living

As a sophomore, I moved into a $500/month (total) apartment at Cedar Cove on Louisville. The night my roommate and I moved in, Keffer McGee drowned in the pool. It wasn't anything special, but it was common. Sure there were more expensive options, but not too bad. The most expensive apartments in Starkville were 4BR that were priced per room, but under $1000 total.

Collegiate apartment life has gotten out of control. And dorms are better than they have ever been, but all so expensive. The luxury apartment scene in Starkville with granite countertops, stainless appliances and a resort pool changes your perspective. In a lot of cases, students have better housing arrangements in college than they grew up in.

So when its time to get in the real world, they have an inflated view of themselves and what they deserve. Starter home? **** - we need a home on the lake in Reunion. And that's expensive. Its part of the brain drain issue that our state faces - grads are leaving for ATL, DFW, BNA where they can make $70k instead of $45k. Never mind that it costs more to live in these cities, its the vibe that matters.

I saw a receipt that was trending yesterday on X. Someone ordered one burrito, a side of guac and chips and a Mexican Coke from Chipotle and after delivery and tip, it was $68. Thats a hell of a convenience markup. Add in daily coffee, a $15 lunch at Subway and life is expensive in a hurry. Kids make it more expensive. My niece is pregnant and has a $1500 stroller on her registry and is discussing giving birth in something called a luxury baby suite. She's a school teacher.

Social media isn't helping. But there's big business in LA/NYC/Miami/Vegas of renting out luxury homes and automobiles, letting influencers film themselves in "their home, driving their Lambo." But closer to home, its someone taking a nicer vacation, driving a nicer vehicle, or wearing nicer clothes. I live in Madison. It's not Highland Park, Prosper or even Franklin, but it is still a wealthy area. There is so much debt keeping up with the lifestyles. If you are a young male, the best advice I can give you is to marry well. Not well-off. Well. Having a wife that is not into Louis Vuitton, 6 trips a year to 30A, Junior League everything is a cheat code. I have friends that do well but can't keep up and its destroying their life. The divorce rate in Madison has to be 3x the rest of the state.

Society's expectations of a normal middle class life have gotten out of hand. We want it because we think we deserve it. Now get off my lawn.

 

[pseudonym]

I don't really care that it's happening......I care about how to beat it. Or at least not be crippled by it.

And I don't have enough money to buy bitcoin.

You don't have to buy a whole bitcoin. Many people stack sats by converting $10 per day.

For example, a person who started converting $10 per day five years ago would have converted $18,270 into 0.75928941 BTC, valued today at $78,702.68.