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Exactly. $400 for mine. $100 would fill a shopping cart with groceries back then. Health insurance: $80-125/mo. Internet: $15/mo. Garage sales almost everything was less than $10, most of it was less than $5. Goodwill was a deal. DIY/homemade was a deal, a way to save money.
It was a different time. There’s no equivalent to that time today, today is pretty awful.
And now it’s all going to be so much worse thanks to MAGA, oligarchs, and Heritage.
Yes, what is up with thrift stores charging almost the same as “first-hand” stores? Yet another example of how this generation is screwed (along with all of us old people).
Or they somehow want to price things off eBay prices. Bro, you are a thrift store. You aren't some place that should be trying to get the absolute most out of an item.
Price it vaguely on what people might pay for some used, unwashed, beat to hell thing. If someone thinks they can get more by selling it online, that's fine. That's on them. You don't have to compete with them. Turnover of items is more important than the most money on that old glass cup.
You used to be able to get grandpa's old used golf clubs for $5/7 at goodwill and I put together a whole set for cheap. Moved and had to leave it behind now they put all the clubs straight online, you can't even get them at the stores anymore. And the price is barely better than a newvset from Walmart. I wanna golf again :(
Video games are almost always ridiculous too. They’ll sell anything good online, and then charge like $10 for one of their 40 copies of Wii Fit.
The only good place to thrift nowadays is the small local places run by like churches. Goodwill sells shitty acrylic yarn for more than it costs new, wants $20+ for used kitchen appliances, sells current dollar tree shit for $5…
Goodwill fell off. It's worth noting how the stuff we buy is basically worthless for resale the moment we buy it, since cheap new stuff is outcompeting it. It's only value is use value.
I know it’s a little off topic but eBay is a fucking scam as well… So many used items go for prices very close to brand new. I live in California, which charges VAT for ebay transactions. Add in shipping and I would be paying more than brand new for the vast majority of the inventory.
There are no good deals on ebay unless you spend a lot of time in bidding wars. You still risk getting a damaged item too…
Walmart cut costs to the bone and squeezed down on what thrift stores used to charge.
Thrift stores are a deal compared to Macy's, JC Penny, and such.
Boutique thrift shops all try to act like they’re some amazing place to find funky retro fashion just waiting to be discovered on a Tiktok. It’s all overpriced. We’ve been to Goodwill and Habitat locally for stuff. Prices go from great to dirt cheap. They just want to move stuff, not hold on to someone’s idea of vintage cool.
Agreed.
The only way for a wage earner to bootstrap their way up is to have money when historic opportunities to invest present themselves, like March 2020 and April 2025. If you have a few thousand to invest now, chances are that will turn into a massive profit over time. And even better, hold those securities for longer than a year and you get a preferred, lower tax rate on any profits.
But most people can't do that. They're stuck taking out an (air quotes) "interest-free" loan from Klarna to make sure they don't starve this week. Our politicians are, thankfully, focused on the most important priorities, like drag queen story time. (And that's sarcasm, btw.)
Please don't invest right now. You are right that you can make a lot of money if you know what you're doing, but it's still a casino. With the people running the US right now, if they ever fully implement the tariffs, the market is going to eat shit. Then you can buy if there's some glimmer of hope like Republicans losing Congress in 2026. I'm not trying to do US defaultism here, I believe this advice holds worldwide.
I pulled all my money out when Trump got elected, and that was a good choice. If I'd gone all in on options I'd be straight up hood rich, but I can't gamble everything we have.
If the US collapses, the dollars you saved from pulling your investments is worthless...
That's true, but so would the investments themselves.
Yes... But if the US doesn't collapse then you make a lot of money buying the dip.
So either the US survives, and you make a lot of money if you invested, or the US crumbles and your cash or investments are both worth the same amount (zero).
I bought my house in 2014, $224k at 4% APR, my monthly payment including taxes is $1400/mo.
It's only been 11 years, inflation is up ~35% in that time, so buying the same house now should be ~$1900/mo. Actual price if I were to buy it now? ~$3500/mo. And wages have barely budged. No wonder young people entering the workforce can't buy houses anymore.
Interestingly, though, that huge run-up in price is also half the reason why people think they need to own homes. We need to stop looking to homes to be the “engine of wealth creation” or we’re only asking for more of this.
The other half of the equation, of course, is wanting to have a stable home that you can control. And that’s still as valid as ever.
But homeownership isn’t necessarily the best choice for everyone. It reduces your mobility and optionality and it carries some risks and hidden costs.
But as long as everyone looks at it as the gateway to wealth, and feels like everyone is getting a piece of that action except them, it will contribute to the continuation of hyperinflation.
We bought a house in Tampa Florida area in 2018, our monthly cost was $1400/month. Moved to Washington in 2022 and bought a house and the house is smaller and our monthly payment is $3k. Area matters of course, but comparably I'd imagine we're in similar situations.
But this flies in the face of the great American delusion that everyone can white knuckle their way through large crises arising from systemic failures or engineered on purpose by oligarchs.
Exactly. We need more flying in that face. Like bricks
We had to give up entirely on affording a house. There are ROOMS for rent at $1200 here. This used to be a low COL area until COVID. We had low infection rates so a ton of people moved here and we don't have the infrastructure to support them. We've been priced out of what living space we did have and since there's still the illusion it's cheap to live here, it's almost impossible to get a living wage.
My parents, 35000 dollars for a two bedroom, 1 bath house 3 acres of land in the middle of BFE back in the 80's
Today, 3 bed, 1 bath house with less than .25 acres, 200k
With inflation something comparable to my parents house in BFE, because it's not changed all that much, should only be 100k.
And the recent minimum wage increase to 13.75 an hour passed by the people is in process of being revoked by Republicans.
And I do get tired of visiting home and taking to people that spout off the 'back in my day' bs.
the recent minimum wage increase to 13.75 an hour
Have higher standards
Seriously. I'm sick of this let's-beg-for-an-itty-bitty-change nonsense. If rent near me is $2000/month, and that's supposed to be 1/3 of my pay, then I should be making $6000 per month ($72k per year!)
Assuming I worked a full 40 hours every week, with 4 full weeks in a month, that means I'd need to make $1,500 per week, which breaks down to $37.50 per hour (before taxes, as well as before payments for employee benefits, garnishments, etc.)
I don't live anywhere fancy. This place is an average apartment with too little parking and too many centipedes. Thankfully, I am not paying the entire rent by myself at this time, because I don't make anywhere near $37.50/hour.
If $13.75 was the wage of somebody who worked a full 40 hours/week, for 4 weeks, they'd only make $2,200. Total. That's it. For the entire month.
If your fight for a new minimum wage is starting with a number less than 30, you've already lost.
There's a famous Agatha Christie quote where she mentions that when she was young, she never imagined she'd be rich enough to own an automobile or poor enough to not have servants in her house. At some point, the affordability of one shot way past the other.
In my lifetime, I've seen huge cost increases in housing, and huge cost decreases in most technological products. When I was a kid, the normal TV size was something like 20 inches, and cost more than a month's rent for a typical apartment. In 1990, the average rent was $447, according to this. I found a Sears catalog from 1989 with a 25 inch TV selling for $549, and a 20 inch TV for $318. It would be hard to convince someone from 1990 that one day the cheapest, shittiest apartments in the poorest neighborhoods would rent for more than a 60-inch TV per month. Or that the typical ambulance ride costs something like a month's salary of a factory worker.
That's the real problem with old people's sense of money. The human tendency is to assume that all products cost the same multiple of those products prices in their early adulthood, so the luxury products of their youth remain the luxury products of today. These old people are stuck in some kind of Agatha Christie style of cost comparison, without the self awareness, and thinking that someone who owns a cell phone should be able to afford to buy a single family detached house, or couldn't possibly be bankrupted by a single Emergency Room visit.
Having taken the point of this post as it was intended, we can also recognize that learning how to manage your money is in fact always a good thing. Will basic hygiene undo generations of economics? No, but we certainly shouldn’t NOT teach young people to manage their money.
Nobody on earth has suggested we stop teaching economic literacy. We should however stop pretending it is sufficient. We require systemic change.
I wish I felt confident in that. But you can almost hear it right in this tweet. The mere suggestion of financial literacy is borderline offensive.
It’s similar to how the notion of reducing your personal environmental impact is actively shit upon these days. Say anything about it and someone will shout you down about how corporations pollute more.
It’s very similar: there are larger forces polluting the environment that make your personal behaviors insufficient to solve the problem.
All true.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do what you can personally.
My first apartment (without roommates) was $600/month I think. I just check the present day at it rents for $1400! The mortgage cost on my first house (small/low cost of living area) was only $1000/month.
I just don't know how young people are affording housing these days.
I rent my parents' other house and just pay carrying costs. It's still $2800/month because of location. Trust me, it's a much better deal than it sounds...
Well, most don't. Just let them enjoy abuse at home.
Is this the original unmodified drawing? What a dump truck on the lad.
Dr. Manhatten got back.
