This is pretty much me rn. Still living with the folks. Bummed out. Not really looking at the marriage thing. A life partner would be nice.
Life pro tip: fight lifestyle inflation/creep. Use all the shampoo. Be conscious of waste. Don’t take it to “frugal jerk” levels but just keep in mind that you have to earn every dollar you spend.
At some point, you’ll probably be making more money. People tend to choose to take this opportunity to also spend more money. Keep this to a minimum. Do you want to retire in your 40s or in your 80s?
Ah, the “just make more money” solution. Simple.
No i think the message was dont waste money. OP fumbled yes but his initial point still stands.
If you are aware from the beginning that your life will be poverty and suffering, you’ll maybe be able to deal with the poverty and suffering a tiny bit better when you get there.
Most people do end up making more money the longer they stick with a job/career. It may still be an unfair wage but a 50 cent raise is still some extra cash at the end of the day, and that little bit can go even farther if you are frugal with it. If you have a surplus of even $50 at the end of a month you can start investing it to at least keep up with inflation or if you’re lucky even get ahead a bit.
Use all the shampoo.
I don’t know why anyone would not do this. The watered-down shampoo spreads easier than its natural form, it’s the best part of the bottle.
lmao, you think anyone in their 20s right now is gonna be able to afford to retire, period?
Must not be from the US. That, or whatever you’re smoking, I want some.
This comment is US defaultism at its finest
I imagine people born before the New Deal felt the same way. Remember, history changes on a dime and decades can happen in weeks.
there was a fuckton of violence before the new deal
At some point, you’ll probably be making more money.
say you are 35+ without saying so
nah if you’re 30 but spent at least five years in a relationship AND you had career growth in the last five years AND you got out of school without debt AND you haven’t had any major setbacks AND you’re generally frugal, you should have a decent amount available due to splitting expenses and be making okay income now
<30 tho idk you might be cooked
you could have just avoided all that text by writing ‘be born to parents with money’
nah my parents barely had shit, just very frugal
you can’t frugal 12 an hour in 2025 much less 7.25
never said you could
so like I said, having enough money growing up is kinda obvious in most cases
nothing wrong with being blessed, in fact it should be the default but our country is sick
I’m under 35 and I agree with him. The vast majority of people will end up making more money as they get older
lmao have you looked at US income/social mobility recently?
no one cares if you are a few raises better off I’m talking real wealth growth
I’m betting you grew up with parents that had money
I’m not trying to make light of the exceptional challenges you face and the opportunities and luck I had but I didn’t have it particularly easy.
In my childhood, I’d generally get new shoes when the old ones had holes in the bottom. After high school, I worked painting restaurants and refinishing furniture while I went to community college, then got a pell grant and a student loan to go to state university. I took the bus or rode a $500 street legal dirt bike with a cracked frame to work after I graduated. I was living in a small 3 bedroom house with 4 other roommates at the time (one of whom lived in the garage). I needed a few more university courses to get into a professional training program for my career. It took me a couple more years to complete those pre-reqs and each of those classes cost me about $1000, which was nearly all the money I could save up each year. Eventually, I got through the training program, obtained a professional license and was able to get a job which would, after about another 10 years of work and promotions, eventually become rather high paying.
As you all have guessed, I’m over 40.
I agree with you if you suggest that the system is rigged in favor of the rich and connected or that everything is fucked for people just entering the job market. But also, it’s on you to figure it out.
Say you think working retail is a career without saying so.
If you don’t get more earning potential over time you don’t have a career, you have a job.
fuck off selfish shitbag
all full-time jobs should provide a living wage with benefits
stop supporting corporate subsidies
Complete nonsense response.
You seem unable to distinguish between how you think things should be and how they actually are. This is probably why you have a job and not a career.
YOU will never earn more money, other people are capable of making better decisions. Navigating the world like ‘well if things were just this would make sense’ is fundamentally incredibly stupid.
no dipshit I know how things ‘are’
it’s fucking disgusting and so are people like you supporting it
as to the personal attacks lmao you know nothing about me but because I’m not a selfish asswad I must be poor? lolol
people like you are a cancer to a better society
I’m not supporting the way things are, where did I say that. A system can be unjust and you can also make bad decisions inside of it. These are separate things.
A store clerk should be able to afford buying a house. But they can’t in many places, so idk maybe don’t aim for that as your 10 year career plan if you want to buy a house.
Insane of you to complain about ‘personal attacks’.
so brain washed you can’t even feel the boot, you just accept being this selfish as normal
I managed a house by 30. The trick is to do everything you can to avoid contributing to capitalism. Contribute as little as possible when you have to.
I cycle instead of owning a car, the tablet I am typing on was second hand, I cook every single meal from raw ingredients and I am starting to grow some of the more expensive ones so I don’t even have to buy them.
i’ve been walking everywhere, never eating out, never going to the movies, never going to theme parks, never taken a vacation, never buying new electronics, for my entire adulthood. my laptops have all been hand-me-downs and i’ve owned literally 3 smartphones in 20 years, all ultra-budget models, two of which were hand-me-downs. i’ve never not had roommates, sometimes as many as 6 or 7 people to the cheapest fleabag slumlord ass apartment we could find. and i’m still in the fucking red.
you didn’t discover some “trick” your privileged ass got fucking lucky. own it.
The extent of my luck is having a job most of the time. Had a few shitty irregular employment roles but otherwise I saved most of it in a retail role.
My income is very close to the cost of rent here, and is less than the amount that house prices are increasing each year.
Even if I save every cent of my income and somehow manage to live spending $0, I’m still getting further away from owning a house every year.
You can’t just budget your way to success.
Agree
I shared a house with others to keep rent low
“and is less than the amount that house prices increase each year.” and he didn’t imply he was only talking about what’s left of it after rent.
Inflation works to reduce the value of the debt over time. If you had a mortgage from 20 years ago you would be paying fuck all now compared to your income.
I bought a house for ~£230k 2 years ago, if inflation continues as it did over the past 25 years that would be £440k in the next 25 years - quite a big assumption though but it gives you an idea there. However, in 2050 I will still be paying the mortgage of a £230k house because that is how much I borrowed, and my income will have increased by some amount as well.
Yes wages are not keeping up with inflation, yes all billionaires should be hanged, but its still possible to get food and shelter. Don’t give in to hopelessness. Don’t give up just because something might be difficult.
Unfortunately this straight up just doesn’t work in a lot of places
Share a house to significantly reduce rents
I would rather be homeless than have roommates
But I like pooping alone…
The trick to owning a house by 30 is to build a Time Machine and go back 30 years.
It’s just not possible now. I could put away %100 of my pay check and I don’t think it would cover mortgage. And downpayment? I don’t think I’ve ever been able to afford to save more than $500 before my finances collapse
Well, what can I say, it’s terrible, but it can be even worse, just imagine if you can’t even rent a place to live and you wash yourself on the street…
I can’t tell if Jerry is laughing or crying…
We can extrapolate that he filled his mouth with water, and is trying to keep it from spraying out
Yes
2me4me
As someone in their late 20s who just bought a house, I can attest that these little frugal tricks did help quite a bit.
As someone in their early 40s who just bought a house, I can attest that having a well-paying job helps greatly and that watering down the shampoo leavings does not.
Also mid 40s and just bought my first house. 100% was the new job with significantly higher pay. None of my past efforts at frugality paid any dividends either.
My partner is in her 30s, works 4 days as a school teacher, and just bought her first house in London. It’s possible!
(I don’t need to add that I’m in tech and have a very convenient salary, since that’s not at all related, right?)
At least it’s not so bad outside of London. I’m on the south coast and bought a few years ago while saving up was done at/near minimum wage.
Not as long as they purchased their house independently of you, no.
Im in the process of buying my second house, much bigger on a nice chunk of land. I make good money nowadays but we absolutely 100% would not be able to afford anything at all if we didn’t already own a house to sell. We bought it for $100k in 2021 from a grumpy old guy who wouldn’t leave during showings and scared everyone off. Thankfully I grew up around grumpy old guys and he liked us enough.
We’re now selling that house for $230k, granted I also entirely rebuilt it the last 4 years and I think we could get more but I like the people buying it. We got lucky all the way through.
I started with a family business that underpaid me. Couldn’t get ahead in my hometown city so i moved to another city with cheaper rents and housing costs. I eventually got a job where my work ethic and previous education and experience makes me almost irreplaceable. I used that as leverage with my boss to get paid a more competitive wage for my skill and responsibility level.
Before i was employed or got my raises, saving every penny i could kept me afloat. I’d take my neighbors empty beer cans and return them if i noticed them in the bin. I had maybe a month or 2 of living expenses left when i finally found a job in my field. Had i not been frugal from the start i may have had to abandon my whole plan and move back home completely broke before i could land a job.
Doing 1 frugal trick won’t make a big difference. Applying a frugal mindset as often as you can will make a noticeable difference and can give you a little monetary boost to start getting ahead. For example if you have a little extra money, you can stock up on food during a sale. It requires more capital up front but you benefit from a cheaper price long term.
I wish I could express to you exactly how little of that I read
Yea, how dare people share their life stories on a discussion forum.
care to share your line of work with the rest of the class?
I started in pool services now i work in residential water treatment. Working with wells, filters, and softeners to provide good quality water to rural residents and businesses. I’m unofficially on call and also the emergency help line for customers with equipment issues.
I did it on UK minimum wage, pretty easy tbh. So line of work shouldn’t matter if you live in a 1st world country.
Where and how much money comes from you?
I pay 100% of the cost and i get it from my trades job that i put 50+ hours a week into. I have 15 years of experience in that trade (i did get lucky starting as a young teen but it did rob some of my youth).
Its no mansion. Its over 70 years old and only 600 square feet but thats enough for me and I’m handy enough to fix most of the important stuff.
I used frugal tricks while living in my apartment to save up and invest a little bit. I now use those tricks to keep costs down. Recently I’ve been doing research on how viable a clothesline in the winter will be.
A folding clothes horse inside the house where it is warm would be more effective, depending if it gets cold where you live.
Technically the heating of your house is now taking that hit to dry the clothes. My space is already tight and it already has high enough humidity from a wet crawlspace. People have used clotheslines in the winter for centuries, especially on a sunny day with a breeze clothes dry pretty well.
Do you have a vapor barrier in the crawl space? Idk what you mean by wet but its probably fixable.
Its basically got a trench all around the inside that has water seeping in from the edges and the trenches go to a sump pump. Short term im planing on installing drainage pipe in the trench then concreting over it to reduce the water exposed to the air. Long term I’ll eventually have to excavate around the house, install drainage, repair and reseal the foundation.
I guess i could try to just install vapor barrier over the trench and it would have a similar effect.
The crawlspace is closer to a short unfinished basement. I can stand between the joists in most places.
If you have sitting water then you most definitely got mold. But if its like you described treat the mold replace insulation then vapor barrier on the joists and tape over seams. Its not a huge house so that all can be done in a weekend if you know what you’re doing. But it really easy just a pain in the ass.
