You can’t stabilize any finances if you’re taking out payday loans in order to pay rent every month

Oh, I 100% agree. But in many cases, taking payday loans is a symptom of other serious problems in someone’s spending patterns and not necessarily an income problem. Maybe the car payment is too high, or perhaps they’re paying too much for food. Whatever it is, that needs to get fixed to end the need for emergency cash.

If you’re in the lower middle class or higher, there’s no excuse for it IMO. If you’re in the lower class, you’ll need to get creative (government assistance, co-living, etc).

you can just sell the supercar or downsize your house or whatever

You say that, but in many cases, they still end up net worth negative. The problem here isn’t with income, but spending, and you’re not going to sell your way out of a spending problem.

I think income divided by local cost-of-living could be, maybe.

Certainly. Economic classes are very much location-dependent. If you live in NYC or SF, you’d need to adjust the numbers a bit, likewise if you live in rural Mississippi or something. And there are calculators available online to help with that.

most people who are struggling financially are not in those situations

Pretty much everyone will say that though, because people are pretty bad at noticing the excesses in their own spending. If you’re not standing out as being “weird” for spending so little, then you’re probably “keeping up with the Joneses,” because the average American is pretty irresponsible.

This is a pretty broad brush stroke to be sure, and I’m sure there are plenty who are legitimately struggling despite a conscious effort to cut costs. I’m just saying that many, if not most, people who aren’t “financially stable” could make room in their budget to get financially stable, but instead end up throwing a ton of money down the drain due to interest.

Perhaps. But this article has nothing to do with left/right ideology. So while they definitely seem to be socialist, I’m not convinced their frequent posting is politically motivated, I think they just have a curated feed, and that includes socialist stuff.

I consider myself pretty centrist and despise both the political left and right. I consider myself Libertarian, and this election has left me really scratching my head because pretty much everything both candidates are pushing for the wrong direction IMO (I don’t like tariffs, value balancing the budget, price controls suck, etc).

So I strongly disagree w/ OP’s political ideology, but I still don’t really have an issue with the posts they make. If I think it’s leftist noise, I usually just move on to the next one, but if it’s a high quality article, I’ll upvote.

my salary hasn’t kept up with inflation

Yes, that certainly is a problem. Salary increases tend to lag inflation a bit, so you’d either need to switch jobs or wait to get caught up.

That said, wage growth has exceeded inflation for the last year and a half or so, so hopefully you’ll get a yearly salary bump to help out. Our salary bump was higher than usual last year (about 5%), but still below inflation (8-9%), and I hope our salary bump this year will fix that (4% would be enough to catch back up).

But the fact that you’ve been able to stay financially stable despite high inflation means you’re probably closer to “The Millionaire Next Door” than the average Joe drowning in credit card debt. If you can stay out of debt and put money away for retirement every month, you’ll be doing fine in your 60s when you’re looking at retirement.

you can budget yourself from the top of one financial class into the bottom of another one

Sure, if you follow the average advice (save 10%), then yeah, one bump-up is essentially expected. But if you’re more aggressive, jumping up more than one level should be feasible.

This video talks about economic classes, and the portion I linked shows how you can go from $65k/year salary (middle middle class) to lower upper class by age 50 by just investing 10% of your income. So this is essentially middle middle-class to lower-upper class. If you do 40 years instead of stopping at 50, you’d have $3M by retirement age. If we account for 2% inflation, you’d have about $1.7M in today’s dollars, which is almost to upper upper class. If you bump to 15% of your income, you end up with $2.6M after taking inflation into account, which is in that upper upper class range. So with just a median household salary, you can have an upper upper class retirement.

$1k is enough for any one emergency

I never said it would definitely cover all emergencies, but it should cover most emergencies. For example:

• car issue - usually $400-1000 - my last FE strut replacement cost $800-900, and that’s on the more expensive end (certainly wouldn’t handle engine work though)
• washing machine/dishwasher/refrigerator dies - new one costs a few hundred, maybe slightly more (my fridge this year cost ~$1300, cheaper options exist)
• surprise funeral of a loved one - plane tickets/gas and a hotel for a couple nights should be under $1k

It’s not going to solve everything, but it’s a nice milestone that means you can weather most emergencies, provided they come one at a time. The goal here isn’t to guarantee that you’re safe from everything (nobody should stop at this step), but to protect you from most of the small things that would otherwise go to debt.

If we raise the bar too high, people will get discouraged and give up. $1k is a pretty decent goal and can do a lot of good.

Perhaps, idk. It’s really hard to tell someone’s motivations just by looking at posting frequency.

Exactly. Just take solace in knowing that each emergency that wipes out your e-fund could have been devastating debt, and the e-fund is doing its job.

Ideas:

• donations - these need to actually go toward Firefox development, they don’t, so I don’t donate
• paid services (e.g. their white-labeled VPN, they could also white-label Tuta or Proton services)
• and add-on that pays sites to not see ads (my preference)
• funding of privacy-oriented startups - they have something like this, so do more of it

Ideas:

• directly ask for donations, and actually use those donations to fund browser development
• build an add-on to pay sites instead of seeing ads - Mozilla could take a cut here
• push harder on existing, optional add-ons that generate revenue, like their VPN

But the article here reads like, “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas. Have ads…”

I would prefer Mozilla to ask. Some options:

• on first install, pick your poison - donate, accept ads, or accept negative karma
• pay to remove ads on a page - you’d pay into a bucket, and payments to remove ads would subtract from that
• more optional, revenue-generating services (e.g. push their VPN harder)

Eh, I care about a third: browser engine diversity. If they drop Gecko, I’m out, there’s literally nothing left to keep me here.

Eh, they’ve been speedrunning this for years, this is just the most efficient way to get to the end goal of complete ruin.

I have a few alternative ideas, but I honestly don’t think they’re interested in hearing them.

Cool, they banned my account some years ago and nothing of value was lost. And I don’t think I even did anything to violate their rules, I only used it to pay rent for a few years and a handful of eBay purchases. My best guess is that someone “hacked” my account (my PW was pretty bad and in multiple breaches), but I tried logging in after years of not using it and couldn’t do anything with it.

But yeah, nothing of value was lost. I haven’t needed PayPal for years and don’t need it now. Just say no and pay directly on whatever site you’re buying at. I’ve bought tons of stuff from eBay and other online sites for years and it has never been an issue.

So screw 'em, just don’t use their service.

Fair. Here are some that I find to be pretty consistently competitive:

• Vultr
• DigitalOcean
• Hetzner

I’ve used each and liked each. They’re rarely the absolute cheapest, but they are usually competitive at all tiers with no pretty much no shenanigans. I’m currently with Hetzner, which has been good for the few months I’ve been with them, but I’ve spent multiple years with the other two.

No, we avoid our local Kroger store (different name here), but when we go, I use my parents’ number since they go there a lot and frequently use the fuel rewards. Our local grocery is supplied by Associated Food stores, which has the “Food Club” and related store brands.

The main options in my area (Utah) are:

• Kroger sub-brand Smith’s - not very convenient in my area, but the stores are large and have everything
• Associated Food brands - smaller, more plentiful stores
• Walmart/Sam’s - I avoid like the plague, but they’re just as plentiful as AF brands
• Target - crap quality and high prices, not an option at all
• Costco - good selection and great quality for the price
• random specialty shops - higher price, but niche selection

Most of our spending goes to Costco, most of the rest goes to specialty shops, and we fill in the gaps with the local grocery chain. We spend something like $100/month at the grocery store, so it’s not worth interacting with their loyalty program.

That makes a ton of sense. To add some numbers to it:

1. $1k in the bank - should be enough for any one emergency
2. 1 month e-fund - no longer impacted by payday being late
3. 3 month e-fund

Getting to step 1 can be very difficult, especially for the lower class, but $10 or $20 at a time can get there. But it needs to be intentional, and that’s really hard when working two (or three) jobs, so many just don’t put in the consistent effort needed to get there. But once that first buffer is there, the rest becomes a lot easier since you’re no longer getting pushed backwards.

Reminds me of this, but in reverse:

https://youtu.be/_0tVlLZLzeo?t=308

I’m interested to see how this turns out, because I’m thinking this would significantly increase maintenance costs on those panels due to rocks being kicked up, vibration from the train, etc.

If you like this video, check out Why Looking Poor is Important, which talks about the different ways each economic class views money.

Wow, that sucks. I imagine government policy has a significant influence here…

“Class” is determined by income, “enough” is determined by spending habits. You could make $50k and have positive cash flow, or you could make $400k and always be strapped for cash. The higher your income is, the more options you have, but also the more exposure you have to more ways to waste your money.

This is a great video about this. Basically:

• lower class ($34k median income, $3400 net worth) - ~25% of population - these are those who truly struggle with emergencies, and flirt w/ the federal poverty line; net worth is pretty much nothing (often negative!); main goal is get an emergency fund to break the cycle of poverty
• middle class - three categories (lower, middle, upper)
  • lower ($44k median income, $71k net worth) - ~20% population - identify more with middle-middle class and tend to get into more debt than necessary by keeping up with the Joneses, and could be financially stable w/ some discipline
  • middle ($81k median income, $159k net worth) - ~20% - financially stable, most of assets are in home
  • upper ($117k median income, $307k net worth) - ~20% - passive income and compound interest supplement income; some live paycheck-to-paycheck due to lifestyle inflation, but some can do really well with investments
• upper class - two categories (lower and upper)
  • lower ($189k median income, $747k net worth) - ~10% - specialized professions; most people can get into the lower upper class with discipline (10% savings rate on $65k salary => $787k investments by age 50); little pressure from everyday expenses
  • upper ($378k median income, $2.5M net worth) - ~5% - some college grads working as employees, but a lot of these are business owners

At each level, I see two types of people:

• lower class
  • savers - those who scrimp to be able to cover emergencies that would otherwise screw them over; these can move up to the middle class
  • “normies” - those who get screwed over and over and stay in the lower class
• middle class
  • savers - less scrimping here, but need to budget and avoid “keeping up with the Joneses”; some discipline can establish a solid retirement
  • “normies” - debt payments prevent any kind of progression, and workers are terrified of job loss because the house of cards could come tumbling down
• upper class
  • savers - become really wealthy (upper upper class)
  • “normies” - some upper class folks are “strapped for cash” because they can’t keep their spending in check, but most have enough income to recover from even the worst mistakes

By this metric, not being strapped for cash is possible for pretty much anyone in the lower-middle class and above, and even those in the lower class could get there by stabilizing their finances so they can take some risks to increase their income (i.e. night school, quitting a bad job for a better job, getting CDL and financing a truck, etc). On the flipside, being strapped for cash is also quite possible at pretty much any income level, and I’ve heard plenty of stories about lawyers and doctors having trouble keeping up with debt payments because they got caught trying to keep up with those wealthier than them.

So I don’t think “strapped for cash” is a good metric for economic class, income is, because you can make choices that can cause you to be paycheck-to-paycheck at almost any income level, as well as choices to maintain stability at almost any income level.