IMO “wealthy” is not the threshold one needs to achieve. They key to a sustainable life is a low “burn rate”. This is why generational properties were so important and why it is a tragedy that it is so rare amongst working people in the US (for many reasons). That plus public transportation and basic healthcare. The US is designed to turn people into economic slaves by removing the option to work less.
If rent/mortgage, basic healthcare, and car payments were not a requirement, would you be under such pressure to stay in a job that exploits you? That’s why many municipalities do not allow multi-family homes because they don’t want multiple generations partitioning the big house your grandparents left you in order to fit your parents, your sisters family and your family under one paid off roof. Public transportation? Ha! Get a job to pay for a car, to drive to work, to pay for the car. Basic healthcare? You better not lose that job unless you want to die of disease or drown in medical debt.
I still have a mortgage, but I don’t have car payments and my bills have been steady for years.
I have never been stable by any historically recent metric, yet I can easily survive on $750/mth usd living in the US. Sure, a depressed area, but I can make it work.
I’ve never been stable so I learned to live on very little, and make up for it where I can. I won’t ever have money for travel, but historically nobody did. We are spoiled as fuck to think international vacations are a baseline necessity to call life good.
It’s not easy in today’s world but it is totally doable, if you don’t give a fuck about keeping up with people around you, and focus on what makes your life good.
When someone leaves you a home for nothing when most of the people around you cannot afford one, that is ‘wealth’. If I did not have to worry about rent, healthcare and car payments, that would make me wealthy - because it is the wealthy who do not have these concerns to the same degree as the majority of the population. Generational wealth is also a great way to keep the ‘undesirables’ out of a community - and has been used so multiple times in the past. It’s one of the reasons why people from poor families statistically end up just as, or even more poor than their parents.
IMO “wealthy” is not the threshold one needs to achieve. They key to a sustainable life is a low “burn rate”. This is why generational properties were so important and why it is a tragedy that it is so rare amongst working people in the US (for many reasons). That plus public transportation and basic healthcare. The US is designed to turn people into economic slaves by removing the option to work less.
If rent/mortgage, basic healthcare, and car payments were not a requirement, would you be under such pressure to stay in a job that exploits you? That’s why many municipalities do not allow multi-family homes because they don’t want multiple generations partitioning the big house your grandparents left you in order to fit your parents, your sisters family and your family under one paid off roof. Public transportation? Ha! Get a job to pay for a car, to drive to work, to pay for the car. Basic healthcare? You better not lose that job unless you want to die of disease or drown in medical debt.
I still have a mortgage, but I don’t have car payments and my bills have been steady for years.
I have never been stable by any historically recent metric, yet I can easily survive on $750/mth usd living in the US. Sure, a depressed area, but I can make it work.
I’ve never been stable so I learned to live on very little, and make up for it where I can. I won’t ever have money for travel, but historically nobody did. We are spoiled as fuck to think international vacations are a baseline necessity to call life good.
It’s not easy in today’s world but it is totally doable, if you don’t give a fuck about keeping up with people around you, and focus on what makes your life good.
When someone leaves you a home for nothing when most of the people around you cannot afford one, that is ‘wealth’. If I did not have to worry about rent, healthcare and car payments, that would make me wealthy - because it is the wealthy who do not have these concerns to the same degree as the majority of the population. Generational wealth is also a great way to keep the ‘undesirables’ out of a community - and has been used so multiple times in the past. It’s one of the reasons why people from poor families statistically end up just as, or even more poor than their parents.