Even with compound interest $100/mo is only going to yield retirement like savings over 40 years with >=10% interest rates and monthly compounding.
It also neglects the fact that the cost of retirement might be much higher when that time comes.
Your whole spend less argument ignores the whole point of the article. These disillusioned people aren’t going to spend less because they don’t think it’s going to pay off. They’re optimizing for happiness in the present moment and that might end up being the right choice.
> everyone can find an extra $50-100 monthly to stash away for retirement
And if you are extraordinarily lucky, perhaps you will get to keep it. More likely, some ordinary life obstacle will come along and wipe it out. When your car breaks down and you need to spend $1000 getting it running again so you can keep your job, are you going to leave that savings money alone, or are you going to spend it? Of course you are going to spend it, because the alternative would be going (further) into debt, and then you would have to spend the next 12 months paying off that debt instead of saving any more money. But in that 12 months, some other thing is bound to happen: perhaps you'll get sick, or you'll have to move and put down a new rental deposit, or any of the other million things that constantly knock people's lives off balance.
It takes multiple consecutive years of good luck before one can get to a position where your advice would be applicable.
> It takes multiple consecutive years of good luck
This is profoundly incorrect. A retirement account cannot easily be withdrawn from for starters... and if you're not using a tax sheltered retirement account (why? you can open one as an individual), then at a minimum having that money go into a second bank account is as simple as filing out a form with your employer. It's amazing how quickly the money will pile up if you just forget all about it.
People who honestly struggle to find $50 of unwisely-spent money per month are either very young or have spent a life messing up. It's really hard to not be able to save for retirement in the US over a 40+ year career. Like, you have to be going out of your way to make poor choices.
The people spending 40+ years making poor choices then turn around and expect everyone else to provide for them in retirement. The audacity is increadible...
Oh, well, have fun feeling superior, I suppose; your perspective is not going to help you understand why people who have not been quite so fortunate as you have tend to make the kinds of decisions that we do.
When you are young, saving anything, even $50-100 monthly ends up being significant for retirement. If you can get employer matching, it's even better.
Then, over a 40+ year career, you are wanting me to believe/accept that it isn't the individual's fault they are still living paycheck to paycheck and cannot save for retirement? Like I said, you have to try to not save at that point in your career. I don't know of a single career that earns a paycheck but doesn't offer retirement plans... I know lots of jobs that don't, but not careers. People working jobs for 40+ years are indeed messing up...
Saving for retirement is perhaps the easiest financial thing you will ever do. It requires filing out a form for your employer, and then you can forget about it if you want.
Instead, some people want to act helpless and then expect others to carry them in retirement. Seems fair...
Maybe try considering that $1200/yr towards retirement doesn’t provide much comfort when that doesn’t even cover a month’s worth of rent today.
It’s okay to admit that while you also had it hard, younger people have it much, much harder. This shouldn’t be surprising. Home ownership is completely off the table if all that can be spared is $1200/yr.
Do you even look at the price tag of bananas when you buy them? Consider perhaps that the date of your birth has more impact than your rugged sacrifice and work ethic. I see plenty of both of those things in my zoomer friends and it doesn’t make rent more affordable.
I’ll add for transparency that I make a very comfortable six figure salary at an old, stable software company you’ve likely heard of. I stay in my amenity-less apartment because the rent is low enough to keep the shaky dream of home ownership alive. I even have pretty generous RSUs. I am extremely lucky. Even still, without ~equal partnership and shared ownership with someone roughly as wealthy as me, I couldn’t afford to own a home in the neighbourhood I grew up in. I’m 29 years old and have been making this much for three years. There aren’t many jobs that pay better than this.
Spare me your financial advice and think of people who make less than a third of what I make who grew up next to me. Some of them work good union blue collar jobs that your parents would have respected. Everything has outpaced wage growth. Everything.
It's $1200 a year for the first year or so, then it's more and more over a 40 year career. I don't understand why this is a difficult concept to grasp - your income increases as you develop your career... and so does your retirement contributions.
This fictitious person who can't scrape together $100 a month for retirement but has worked for 5, 10, 20+ years is a complete myth, or a total failure on a personal level.
> everyone can find an extra $50-100 monthly to stash away for retirement. With compound interest over a 40+ year working career, this is not trivial money.
This amount of money is likely to pay for a couple of surgeries (assuming no other complications or chronic illnesses eating your savings before then) past the age of 50, given how expensive health care is.
It's not a significant amount of money to let you retire in any kind of comfort. Maybe just not starve.
No amount of financial prudence is going to change the math for you if your set of skills caps out at $20/hour on the employment market.
> No amount of financial prudence is going to change the math for you if your set of skills caps out at $20/hour on the employment market
Which is a significant issue. How is it even possible to spend 40+ years doing something (anything) and not acquire skills that earn more than minimum wage or barely above?
40 years is approximately 83,200 working hours. Metaphoric you had 83,200 hours to figure out some sort of skill and work your way up in whatever field you have chosen... but you chose not to. That's a significant issue.
The salary only depends on what you look like or who you know, not what you do. If you're a beautiful chef and can avoid rapists bosses, you can work on a yacht for 2-4 times as much as a chef in an average restaurant and only work three month a year, studying the 9 other months (someone I know is in M1 doing this). If you're a normal chef (or even working at a starred restaurant you don't own), good luck getting the opportunity. And you'll have destroyed ankles, back and feet by the time you're 35 (incidentally, I do not know any second or 'chef de partie' (don't find the translation) over 30yo).
I have exactly one IRL friend that cares about my technology stuff, but he lives far away and we don't see each other in person too often. My ex tolerates me talking about it a little bit before he tells me to shut up, but that's it. It kind of sucks. I've just re-internalized to that nothing I do really matters, and therefore neither do I.
I assume nobody reads my blog, at most a couple people check out the pretty pictures but that's about it.
My opinion on blogging is do it for yourself, not to achieve something. That way it doesn't feel like wasted effort when nobody reads it and it can still be fun or cathartic to write.
That’s not necessarily negative. I’ll sometimes say that to myself when I’m feeling down as a way of freeing myself from whatever thoughts are feeling too heavy. I’m not really into stoicism, but I think it’s what memento mori is getting at.
I've been trialling application allowlisting, but wow is it ever frustrating. So much stuff isn't signed, and when it is the accompanying DLLs aren't. or the signature is invalid. or some of Windows' own executables/dlls aren't signed (why?? you make applocker??) or the installer is, but none of the actual resultant end files
It's not just you. Windows software management sucks and people just find excuses for it. WDAC is really difficult to use directly because of it.
OEM software is usually the worst offender here, all these installers and support utilities should be fully abolished. Drivers should stop loading if they aren't coming from Windows Update and haven't passed some quality control.
in some cases they do! a friend worked for a labour intensive job (X days on, Y days off) and they have a yearly use-it-or-lose-it allowance that he was allowed to claim expenses against for things like boots, jackets, safety gear, etc
the (former) employee keeps them (i imagine for a myriad of reasons like hygiene and various overheads it would take to track such)
things like tools (wrenches, drills, bits, etc) are separately supplied by the company per department/work area (sort of like hot desking in the office world) and stay with the company at all times
Guess it depends on field and where ya work. Places I've worked at will provide tools that you then keep. Only things I haven't kept are "Borrowed" tools which are your couple grand diagnostic tools, or other similar items.
All drills, anything I've bought through tool allowances, and the such, I've kept.
My dad would get a coupon for a pair of steel-toe boots every 5 years from his employer, and he got to keep the old boots after they "wore out". Now he's got a clean rack of pretty good looking boots after 25 years at the same place.
I’ve had… three separate employers provide me steel toe boots. (Well, had me buy some and reimbursed it.) All allowed me to keep them.
I think it’s mostly just a matter of people’s feet varying in size so much it’s not worth the hassle to try and provide them directly or get them back after, because I’ve had uniform shirts and pants and things taken back, washed, and given to someone else… just never shoes.
my retirement plan is an overdose.