| > I have 4 kids and can say that they absolutely do not have to cost that much. Look, my electricity bill doubled. Will the landlord pay for efficiency upgrades? Nope. Will the landlord still increase rent? Hell yes. My water bill doubled. Extrapolate those numbers. Taco Bell used to cost $5 for a meal, and now costs $14. My $5 sandwich now costs $15. 50%+ of my income is lost to taxes of sorts. Before you lecture me on tax, I know my taxes better than you know me. Sales taxes, self-employment taxes, tariffs are all taxes. I get hit with $5-7K of medical bills a year. With insurance. I have a rare idiopathic heart condition, so that's my cost (systematic tax) to stay alive, and probably would be the cost for a potential genetically-infected kid to stay alive as well. I also pay $3K/year in orthodontics last and this year, and another $2-3K in preventative care out of pocket. After my orthodontics is over, I'm sure some other $4K/year shit will come up. I'm stashing up cash for all of this. "Live in the Midwestern United States" and "avoid San Francisco", you say. But there are no jobs there. None that I could get. Everything I could get wanted me to be 3 days/week on site in silicon valley. Jobs that I found in even LA or Boston were literally half the salary or less. Jobs elsewhere were less than 1/3 the salary. Considering more than half my salary goes to taxes, tariffs, and more taxes of sorts, my partner and I really need that cash. I don't have time to cook every meal at home. I don't have time to see kids. I'd get PIP from my job if I did that. Today's jobs don't let you work 40 hours a week; you need to work closer to 80. At my last job I worked 70 hours a week and still got PIPed. My coworkers took my ideas, finished them on weekends, worked 100 hour weeks, presented to leadership on Monday without my name. I didn't meet the "bar". My work is making millions for a big corp as I write this. Just not in my name. Public schools are expensive. Because you pay for it in housing costs. Wherever housing is cheap, public schools are shitty. I live where housing is cheap, relatively speaking, for the bay. But I don't have kids, so it works out. My financial planning model works like this. For every $1 I need to support myself and my partner, I need to earn about $8. $4 goes to <strike>taxes</strike> government laundering, $4 left. For the $4 left, $2 goes to retirement (base assumption is the economy is now irreparably broken and S&P500 isn't necessarily going to grow in the next 40 years like it did the past 40), $1 goes to my catastrophe fund (in case of very realistic war or AI unemployment), $1 goes towards spending now. My partner and I barely meet that 8x bar. That is my bar to feel safe. I couldn't meet it with kids. Without kids, we have a sane and happy life. Everything is covered, from the taxes to the whopping medical bills to housing. End of story. |