49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.
I'm going to ignore that pesky 100% thing for the moment. Apparently we can't even agree on what "Financial Freedom" means. Defining the metric you're polling seems pretty critical if you want a consistent or useful answer. "Over half" is still burying the lede, though - less than one in ten fall into their personal version of that 150% noted above. Aside from the "American families are financially fucked" though, I'm not sure there's any hard data to extract from this.
--
"Peter don't ya call me cause I just can't go; I owe my soul to the company store."
Don't also forget that we're talking about what people say about their own financial position - which may be different from what their financial position actually is. Self-reporting is never accurate, because people report what they feel or are aware of, which is different from objective facts, to a greater or lesser degree.
Between letting individuals define the terms of the question they're going to answer, and then self-reporting, this "study" goes beyond useless and into detrimental.
I agree, the definition is a real problem. While still interesting the survey is pretty screwed.
I thought financial freedom was being independently wealthy. Idle rich. Apparently I was wrong, it means working class but with some "bonus" money. Maybe still struggling but struggling less than most working stiffs.
How free can you be if you still have to work full time?
"This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill, fifteen percent concentrated power of will, five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain, and a hundred percent reason to remember the name."
That’s a good point. I make well into the 6-digits and the one reason I don’t believe that anyone under 7-digits will ever be “financially free” is because of the for-profit healthcare system. One bad accident or cancer and I’m fucked for a long time if not the rest of my life as is anyone that can’t just shrug off 5 to 6-digit bills.
Now if I were somewhere that offered universal health care and I was making what I was, I’d consider myself to be financially free. So I guess I fall into the 46.2% category.
Same. I’m financially stable. Meaning I can hit a few bumps and I’ll be fine. But I don’t think it’s possible to be ’ financially free’ when at any time I could suddenly have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical debt.
I can roughly estimate potential pit falls with my home. And home insurance is reasonably reliable for catastrophic scenarios. Even if they aren’t, bankruptcy is still feasible. The same cannot be said about healthcare. Insurance plans are extremely opaque and while they claim to have terms such as ‘out of pocket maximum’ that should**** in theory limit your losses, there are endless stories about how little that holds up when put to the test.
Proper healthcare coverage would be the single biggest impact on American stability. Nothing else is even close.
You can add disability to this. If I can't work I pretty sure im buggered even if for some reason we get universal healthcare (I guess being disabled, if you can navigate to the point of getting it, you would have medicaid but what comes in every month would not be adequate to stay where I live or such)
It’s 50+49.3+54.2+46.2 = 199.7 if you include the half of Americans that describe financial freedom as “being comfortable, but not necessarily rich”.
Half of Americans describe “financial freedom” as being comfortable, but not necessarily rich, and 49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.
I’m always suspicious of journalists publishing numbers removed from context.
The article is really bad and confusing, but the very first statistics says only 10% are living with their defined financial freedom. It also doesn’t appear to provide any sources for this data.
That's a patriarchal "justice" system for you - always concerned about the future of the men doing all the raping, never about the futures of their victims.
Edit I agree that there are lots of problems with the American judicial system. There are many cases that show the courts are biased towards men and women depending on the issue. However, getting butthurt and immediately blocking rather than discussing the issue like an adult only hurts your cause. There’s not just one bogeyman causing all of the problems in the world. There are lots of them.
Don't even give them that wriggle room, it is up to ALL men to fight the patriarchy, even the biggest feminism allies benefit from the system, I'm so sick of this denial.
Please feel free to shove your outlier up your ass and go look up some statistics.
If you genuinely cared about men, you would be fighting for them, like feminism does (hint: the patriarchy oppresses men too, and even if you didn't give a shit about women, you might care that men are mostly killed, and raped, by other men), but you've not even put the mask on today and have made it clear that you don't actually care about men at all, you just want to continue benefitting from a system that oppresses women.
And thus - you've demonstrated the patriarchy at work.
Slow clap.
Block.
Housing boom made houses twice as expensive in five years. Monthly grocery bill doubled. Renting doubled. Cost of cars doubled. Every day expenses doubled.
As someone who lives in Florida I've got to ask, how? When thinking about finances and investments I often feel like I'm in my own bubble and I don't understand other peoples' situations, motivations, etc. So I'm genuinely curious. 4-bedroom houses near Orlando can be found in the mid 300s. With your income you should be able to pay in cash after saving for just one or two years (depending on how much savings you're starting out with). Even if you wanted something more expensive, are mortgages that difficult to get approved even for someone with such a high income?
I have a house that was bought back when I made around 35K in 2006 and they where giving out loans to everyone, so nothing great by any means. Had someone come by and ask to buy it earlier this year now that I’ve gotten to a decent career class job and I had to tell them no. Like, have you looked at the price of things lately? My payment is less than most single bedroom appartments these days, no way I’m giving that up to someone. It’s an ugly mess, but at least it’s my ugly mess.
This is essentially where I’m at, too, except bought in 2013 so probably slightly less good price.
I can’t afford to do the fix up work on it properly, so it’s slowly crumbling, but I can’t really afford to move either because this place was on the low end when I bought it and hasn’t improved 😜. I literally can’t find housing for myself and 3 cats for the $550/mth I pay now. Even with my place being worth 3x what I paid for it, I’d end up in a worse or (at best) equivalent place for the same price. May as well just stick with the skeletons I know.
Yep, pulling in 110k this year after bonus at my job and I’m having to DoorDash to get just a bit of breathing room.
$3350 mortgage eats more than half my take home. The rest goes to debt (took out a loan to fix a couple things on the house last year, and student loans coming back now), caring for my aging dog, food, bills, maxed 401k that I’m considering dropping for a while, and a little bit for free spending so I can go on a date or two or out with friends. Even with this mortgage payment this would have been easy on just my salary even 3 years ago (it was easy af with dual income at the time). But the way costs have increased are making me feel broke in a way I haven’t felt in a long-ass time. I always thought that if I could make it to six figures I’d be properly wealthy, but I’m not. I’m barely comfortable.
I’m just breaking even on the house. I bought at peak like a genius.
There’s also no way I could possibly buy again if I let this place go, not to mention it’s a starter home already, there’s nothing in my area that would ne cheaper short of going back to renting. I’d rather feel the squeeze and keep the investment.
Re lifestyle, that’s the number one thing I’ve been working on and have clawed back probably a grand a month there since breaking up with my wife and going down to single income. I drove a 10 year old car that I own outright (managed to get my wife to take the newer car that still had payments which she luckily can afford), shop Winco for nearly everything except a few staples that Costco saves me money on and coupon anywhere else, and have one streaming service.
I still let myself go out to with friends occasionally and engage in my long standing hobby, though to a much lesser degree, but I’m getting better and better at saying no to superfluous stuff. After a decade of being pretty comfortable it’s an adjustment to make that I’m giving myself some grace on, though I recognize that my ability to even do that is privilege. My #1 financial goal right now is to start spending under my budget rather than up to it, and I’ve got some units that are proving hard to break, namely having food in the house that I can make and eat even on those days where my executive dysfunction is making everything impossible.
Actually, such a home where I live would be impossible to purchase at half a million dollars. In Seattle, a half million dollar home is a steal, a bargain, a robbery, a theft.
Where I live, across the border, a half million dollars gets you a one-bedroom condo at about 600-800 square feet. A million gets you a townhouse. $2-3 million gets you a house, in the suburbs.
I don’t even know what point you’re trying to make. The person purchased a starter house at a pricepoint they were approved for. Maybe they don’t want a 40 minute commute to Seattle. Why are so up in arms about somebody buying a house? They used to hand them out practically for free in the 1940s and 50s.
I’m not up in arms about him buying a house. I’m providing him info that suggests he make better financial choices since he is claiming he is nearly underwater.
A $300k cash injection and significantly lower mortgage would most assuredly help with that.
Jeez. I can’t fathom what kind of home you must be in to be paying $3350 in a mortgage. Genuine question, have you ever been like, actually poor? I do find it hard to believe anyone willing or even able to pay a mortgage like that could possibly live a life anyone would call barely comfortable.
It all depends on where you live, but the prices are insane everywhere now. I bought my house 5 years ago and the estimates indicate that is now worth double what I paid for it. DOUBLE. And it’s not because I live in some super hot area, the prices have gone up like that almost everywhere in the entire area in and around the city. I could not have afforded this house If I were buying today, and that is with a significantly higher income than when I bought it.
My mortgage is around that for Austin, TX (barely in the city for a tiny home) and that is when the rates were good. So, they probably just live somewhere that’s a bit popular.
1000 sq ft starter home rambler in the seattle region. It’s nothing special and it was downright cheap at $560k. Was still dual income and mostly comfortable when we bought the house. We broke up and I had the income to keep the house, so I am. The equity isn’t there yet so I’m making a play to keep it for 10-15 years before I sell and we split the sale based on an agreement we signed when we broke up (very amicable breakup).
Yea, I grew up dirt poor with many dinners being noodles with butter, I never once had to pay for lunch at school because assistance programs, I never did extra curriculars because we couldn’t afford the materials, every Christmas was nothing or donations, I lived in houses where I could literally see outside through gaps in the walls, and the only reason I experienced a vacation before I was 30 was because my step-dad was negligently killed by a rich guy and we got a settlement that my mom blew on a 6 week vacation to Orlando when I was 14 and then put some money down on a house when she could have bought it outright instead. But I clawed my way out by going to college and getting pretty lucky along the way. 10 years ago I got my first job out of college making $13.75/hour, and have doubled my income twice since then, largely by the luck of knowing some good people, and my current job by the luck of being found on LinkedIn due to having a weird confluence of experience.
A big part of how I got into the house is that my ex-wife has rich family and they gifted us a pretty big chunk of change that got us to our downpayment. Still had to take $520k out on the mortgage, and another $20k to make some needed repairs once we were in (debt I’m taking on too).
I couldn tighten the belt in a few areas, namely my free spending which I limit to $400/month. But that already goes fast if I want to actually do anything and keep myself from falling into a pit by never leaving the house. I also use that money for helping my partner out. Otherwise I’ve cancelled all my streaming services save for Disney plus which is still a good deal, I’ve dumped my insurance to the lowest I can go, I pay $15/month for my cellphone, I’ve stopped buying name brand for nearly everything, and I’ve had to stop any real charitable giving. There is some saving that goes on in there like putting $50/month aside for my car expenses, so as long as nothing major comes up I’m covered, and $100/month toward ‘medical’ which really just pays for my therapy.
None of this is to garner pity, I know I’m in a better position than most people, not to mention much better off than I ever dreamed I could achieve as a kid growing up, and I’m extremely grateful for that. i don’t have any bills I have to choose between, and I never have to wonder if I have food to eat tonight. And I have enough saved (from my bonus) that I’ve got a few months to figure things out if I lost my job today or if a big repair comes up (like my water main breaking back in January), but not enough to replace my fence that fell down last winter. I just always thought that making it to six figures would mean a lot more than it does. I make ends meet and anything extra I make from here is gravy.
Unbelievably huge win. We’re still close friends and I expect that to stay that way. We didn’t break up due to lack of love, but due to incompatibility after we changed dramatically since marrying. We still love each other, but the Beatles were wrong, it’s not all you need.
I pay less than 1/3 of that for my mortgage on a bigger house with a large yard. But we did close on it at a much better time last decade, and it’s about twice as valuable now. I would never consider something so ridiculously expensive that the mortgage could be 3k/mo.
Fortunately for my wallet, I don’t like big city life and the rural real estate is much cheaper.
It’s basically a similar experience except you live in harsher conditions.
I don’t see a considerable difference between poverty line me and six figures me. I have a slightly nicer place (but in debt to the bank instead of renting) and I can buy games on Steam rather than waiting for a sale.
It’s a completely similar experience, mainly because your status as a wage slave basically doesn’t change as your income increases. Your discretionary income changes your purchasing power but you tend to incur more debt and go on more vacations and consume more, but your financial security doesn’t change significantly.
I’ve been at the bottom of the barrel economically, and now somewhere around $140k (before taxes, so really more like $80-90k) and the main differences are negligible. I can be more flexible with my diet, can afford to vacation, I can put some money into savings, and I can outright purchase larger consumer items without saving.
But at the end of the day this financial advantage is only marginal; I’m dependent on my employment continuing. With rising costs for everything, my debt-to-savings ratio is still not where I’d like it to be. I’m nowhere near ready for retirement despite being 49 already. I still feel overall trapped within the system of capitalist wage slavery and do not have the freedom to pursue interests or activities that I would with true “financial freedom.”
I can be more flexible with my diet, can afford to vacation, I can put some money into savings, and I can outright purchase larger consumer items without saving.
These things are not negligible. I understand what you’re saying, “more money, more problems”, but being able to put money into a savings account and take a vacation are things that a large portion of people will never be able to do.
It’s hilarious for you to call me wealthy or privileged. In 2018 my income was about $17,000 and I was completely dependent on my partner.
I’ve worked for $6.85 an hour, I’ve been a dishwasher and a janitor and I’ve been unemployed and on welfare for long stretches, living off $600 a month.
I know where I am and where I’ve been. And it doesn’t change the basic framework of the capitalist meatgrinder.
I have worked since I was 12 yrs old, went to both college and university, and have never once made over $100k per year.
Currently I'm on a fixed income, have limited job opportunities and recently had to downsize to a rooming house as I couldn't afford my bachelor apartment anymore.
Do not equate your hardships with those of us who are facing living on the streets with one missed cheque.
I will equate my hardships with yours because I’ve been there. I know exactly what it’s like. And that’s why I know what it feels like to get a little breathing room from that situation.
But I also can’t pretend that six figures is some kind of luxury experience. It’s still largely hand-to-mouth, you can still live relatively insecure and underhoused (especially with this market), and with the cost of living even a person earning six figures is very vulnerable if you’ve set up a lifestyle that can’t weather unemployment. If my income is $6,000 a month and my outgoing expenses are $5,600 and I lose my job, I’m maybe 3 months from calamity.
Lastly, I’ll say that six figures isn’t what it used to be. It’s a fairly common salary in 2023 to meet the basic needs and costs of the modern world.
This is so infuriatingly disingenuous that I’m having trouble putting into words an intelligent response.
I would need to triple my income to approach 6 figures. Making that much money may not fundamentally change the way I live my life but it would almost entirely remove my primary stressors. I could afford actual healthcare, I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not my landlord is going to raise my rent to a point where I can no longer afford my home. I could actually save money so that if/when something happens to me I’m not completely fucked over night
I get it because I’ve been there too. Recently, actually.
When your financial needs are not being met it feels like you’re drowning and the stress of that can be debilitating. When you’re not sure whether you’ll survive another month it can feel like everything is about to fall apart.
What I’m talking about is the difference between once you reach that stage of no longer feeling desperate (let’s say, the low-income cutoff) and reaching higher salaries ($60k, 70k, 80k, etc).
In my personal experience, once I reached a state of of no longer being desperate about money $60k, the income increases I’ve made since then have not in any way significantly changed my life or my happiness or my sense of financial freedom. I still feel tied to a desk, enslaved to my debt repayments, obliged to continue working 5 days a week, every week, until I die.
Is it nice to no longer live in a state of stress and poverty? Of course. Is it vastly different from how I’m living now? Not really. I could lose my job and be back there in a few months. I could become disabled and be back there. So I do feel some gratitude that, for now, it’s a bit better than what it could be or has been.
One other important thing to note: I’m not American, so I don’t have stress about health care. If I get sick, everything’s going to be peachy.
I get what you’re saying. The money from $60k to $100k just goes into the things you should be able to afford at $60k.
At $100k you can afford to contribute to your 401k, start a small contribution towards your children’s college fund, pay random bills, afford a Toyota Camry instead of a Corolla, moderate vacations, etc.
I had the same experience and it was humbling. But you also slowly forget exactly how tough it was looking at your bank account and knowing there was a bill not getting paid that month.
You’d only be able to afford it for a little while until literally every industry raised prices overnight, jacking up inflation to the degree that normal people once again would struggle to put food on the table.
We need price control laws and high minimum wage laws to boost up the common man’s buying power so that can’t happen.
As someone who had a lot of money, spent time homeless, got fucked by COVID, and am now back in a comfortable place making 6 figures - your comment is way out of touch man.
Its nice to see someone else mention the doubling. There are news things about gas being expensive but its cheap relative to everything else. People better be ready for eight bucks a gallone once it rights itself. Inflation would suggest 30% odd increase but for what you have to buy its 100% over 2020 prices.
Don’t worry urban planners are making driving more difficult instead of mass transit easier. That way when gas prices double the entire lowest tier of the workforce won’t be able to afford to work. “No one wants to work anymore”
There are two kinds of people that work for Trump. One kind understands the phrase “cash up front”, the others are the true believers. One group may get paid. The others won’t and may even end up in jail when they inevitably break the law.
This is not the way, it’s better to work less hours per day than working more hours and fewer days. Productivity peaks at 6 hours, after that you’re either less focused or just doing unproductive things. It’s also gonna burn out harder.
How does me thinking it’s more sustainable to work fewer hours per day instead of more make me out to be a greedy businessman? I didn’t even propose working more days, just fewer hours.
Yeah, totally respect your opinion, but I emphatically disagree with it. The goal of what’s being discussed here isn’t to maximize production for the sake of shareholders, it’s to maximize quality of life for employees. To that end, five six-hour days are worse than four 8-to-10-hour days.
If I start work at 8 and get off work at 2:30 or 3, I still can’t start my camping trip a day early, or spend the day at the water park with my kids. I still have to give up n x 10 hours of my life, where n is my commute time, assume I work in-office.
I would much rather work until 630 Monday through Thursday, and have an extra day where full-day activities are possible every week. That’s worth more to me than 10 extra hours per week of after-work time.
I think flexibility is key. There are days where I peak my productivity at 4 hours. There are days where I get in the flow and can be productive for 12.
That’s admittedly a great point. I think my record was either 12 or 16 hours a day, but it’s incredibly exceptional. Anything above 8 hours of actual, productive work is the result of high enjoyment and focus or a deadline panic mode that’s not sustainable. I think setting 6 hours as a baseline and being able to tweak from there would be ideal, but setting an expectation of over 8 hours as a tradeoff for fewer days is harmful imo.
What about less days and less hours ? That’s just me (or is it?), but I’m always better and more enthusiastic at anything I do when that thing doesn’t take up 80% of my awake time. I always solve problems when going back to them after a pause -always !
I mean yeah, that could absolutely work. My point isn’t so much about the total amount of hours or days, just that it’s not worth piling up too many hours just to work fewer days.
I mean, it’s not a myth, billionaires literally have enough financial freedom to live large for 100 lifetimes.
The myth is that they’re willing to share their rigged casino gambling “speculative investment” derived wealth/winnings, because reminder: nobody can come remotely close to earning a billion dollars through honest labor.
Cause a theoretical ancap hellscape would still have billionaires despite being stateless by definition.
You need power and control to get that rich. The only way that happens today is by the state, but that doesn’t preclude other forms of violence and power.
Your previous statement was just more broadly applied than our existing capitalist system and I find the distinctions interesting to discuss, as it helps identify the root.
Walmart couldn’t exist without exploiting the poor. Even though they could pay their workers enough to live, the majority of them are on food stamps: which is just the govt subsidizing exploitation.
You don’t need billions for most definitions of financial freedom. Unless your definition is spend whatever you want, never worry about running out of money, and not have a job, you really don’t need billions.
That’s why I said 100 lifetimes charitably. That’s 10 million from 1 billion, and even less than half of that is enough for a lifetime of responsible financial freedom.
Capitalism requires most people to be dependent on selling their labor to capitalists at a rate less than it’s worth. No meaningful definition of financial freedom can exist for a majority of the population in a system that creates and supports billionaires.
We could, it’s kind of the the Gene Roddenberry vision, use our burgeoning automation/robotics/AI to do the labor so that Humankind could pursue our passions for everyone’s benefit, but of course those technologies will be patented and used for the exclusive further profit of the non-laboring owner’s club at everyone else’s further expense, exploding our population of homeless peasants with nothing, and “our” government will continue to defend their ability to get away with it at gun point.
It’s like so many things. Human kind should have been united in celebration when we split the atom and harnessed it’s awesome energy generation, a warm light for all mankind, instead our first monkey ass impulse was to use it to incinerate a rival monkey tribe.
Humanity: Juuuust smart enough to be a belligerent threat to ourselves and others, yet too impulsive, short sighted, selfish, and stupid as a species to be anything more.
In the mid to late 1960s economists were predicting 20 hour work weeks and month-long vacations. So it was perfectly reasonable for Gene to imagine a future where nobody had to work.
It wasn’t a falsehood. It was stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarchs, while corporate America, led by GE, shifted from the correct “customers first, employees (who were valued!) second, investors third” model to the “investors first, second, and only” rigged market profiteering dystopia we all suffer today.
The citizen’s of happiest developed nations of the world, not our gold plated cesspool to be clear, as a rule get months off a year, in addition to innumerable social supports. It’s a proven lie that this is how it has to be. This is just how the greediest/most sociopathic people want it to be, and since those traits are what our society rewards, and punishes their opposites, they have all the power.
The play by the owners started well before Reagan. Reagan codified it into law in perpetuity, institutionalized funneling all the money to the owners under the lie of “efficient distribution,” got his “opposition” to take the bribe money en masse, our modern neoliberals, and basically got America to cheer for their own destruction in the decades to follow with his intentionally divisive and manipulative narrative.
Until Trump, Reagan was still the Republican mascot long after his death, that even Democrats claimed reverence for.
Reagan changed the political dynamics in America. The Democrats were a pro-labor party prior to the 1980s. Afterwards they were pretty much lock step with Republicans, and by extension the oligarchs, into today, because the “Reagan revolution” opened their eyes to the fact that bribes by unions, lets be honest, could never come close to the bribes offered by the owners that hated the unions. And in proudly corrupt America, thats what you become a politician to do, get bought.
Since the 1980s, we’ve had no opposition party on economic policy. All we get to vote on is divisive social issues, largely exasurbated by our crony capitalist economic system, by design.
Do you want to be a wage slave subsisting in service to the owners until your death with or without gay marriage?
That is the extent of American freedom since the Reagan Revolution. With the side benefit of keeping the peasants at eachother’s throats instead of looking up.
Our Democrat Senate and Democrat President literally passed a law to bust a prominent union strike last year. There is no vote an American peasant is offered that would be in their corner, only slightly varying degrees of against them.
Long term, the only faint hope I see the Ranked Choice voting compact between states, some of which have passed in some states, but hasn’t reached critical mass yet. Unlike the Federal government, the oligarchs haven’t been able to fully or reliably capture all state governments.
If we keep being presented candidates from the only 2 relevant already purchased parties, there is no hope. Neoliberal Democrats and Fascist Republicans screech over social issues, but are largely the same on economic policy, ie give everything to the owner class and maybe they’ll piss on you one day herp derp.
The only other way this ends is overdue revolution, as even the framers admitted would be necessary at some point. The problem is, our people suffer, but they are also hopelessly addicted to opiates both literal and metaphorical: social media, fast food, literal opiates, etc, and aren’t willing to risk losing those small comforts even to save their larger situation.
So either ranked choice voting or the eventual, inevitable painful collapse are the only 2 possible salvations. Revolution would be preferable to waiting possibly generations of suffering peope for collapse, but I don’t see the will, we’re too intentionally divided by our common enemy the oligarch owner class to see straight enough to agree they are our common enemy and the source of our failing society. Too many gullible Americans will blame a political party, or anyone who says something is wrong, or darkly hilariously homeless people and people with nothing, as if our society’s many, many victims have any power whatsoever.
You know what the sad part is? When you tell people that’s exactly what we should be doing, exploring space, etc, they get mad at you and demand you tell them how pursuing anything more meaningful than throwing shit at their enemies benefits them. How it pays their bills. How it pays their rent.
It’s no secret that a very large percent of people live well beyond their means when a modest lifestyle with retirement funds is obtainable for the vast majority of the population. One doesn’t need a new car every few years, the newest gadget, eating out constantly, and an apartment in a high cost of living area. It’s certainly not morally wrong to buy what you want, but just know that not investing in your own future is making life harder for you in the medium and long term.
If you drop the spending whatever you want, a few million should be sufficient. If you get a 5% annual return that's $50,000 a year per million invested. $150-200k a year if you own your house is more than enough to not worry about having enough money. Plus there's millions in the bank for any truly major expense.
If you mean that they eventually got placed on Social Security disability then yes the majority do retire. You should see what the nursing homes for people in the government system are like.
My definition of financial freedom is not being dependent on an employer. It’s being wealthy enough to be able to walk away from crappy jobs however long it takes to find a better one.
Not true, it seems that way but it is a thing that non-billionaires have. It’s just that those who have such freedom choose to live and often work out of view of everyone else, so you never see them. It plays heavily into confirmation bias. That isn’t to say that the wealth distribution is off, everyone should be in their class including billionaires. They do exist.
Uh wtf? Why did she yell at a nearly 90 year old lady and cross the street to shove her to the ground? Unless I'm missing something, the girl in the photo just seems to be mentally unwell.
Well thanks for you high value opinion. If there was just a different way for you to voice your dissent with my way of expression. Like maybe a thumbs down or something like that.
But there's no such thing so I'm reliant on your written feedback mister comedy critic who goes online to argue about what is funny.
Holy shit you're fucking stupid. Do you honestly not expect me to just go look at the vote counts? Are you that convinced of your own superiority that you think other people are too lazy to scroll upwards in the same fucking thread?
Jesus Christ half of this site is completely insufferable.
Well it appears Flying Squid has his ass cheeks firmly wrapped around his own neck, so maybe Flying Squid should go fuck himself since he's already so far up Flying Squid's ass.
Hank’s first comment has 16 upvotes, your leading comment has 9 upvotes. Hank’s comment does have more downvotes, putting the total vote tally in the negative, but he technically has more upvotes.
Idk, the guy who mentioned it worded it similar to “he has more upvotes than any of your comments have”, which is technically true. You said it wasn’t true, suggesting he was looking at downvotes, but the fact is that BOTH his upvotes and downvotes are higher.
I really enjoy when people are ambivalent about what I come up with. That means people start thinking and I like that more than simple agreement. Thank you for telling me your honest opinion.
People shit on us all the time. We don't mind as we get along with most of the world when it comes down to business and we like to criticize ourselves actually more than most foreigners like to.
Tantrum because she was told she had to leave a park because it would be closing soon. I read a few articles and skimmed one more. Sounds like she was an entitled piece of shit.
Remember the secret service deleted all their text messages and communications at request from the whitehouse? Remember pence was terrified to get in the car with them and refused?
That was actually Major, their younger dog at the time. Champ was their elderly dog who died a couple years ago. They since got a younger pup, Commander, and he too, has been biting staffers, but I don’t know if they revealed which agencies the victims work for. Maybe Commander is copying what his elder brother does, but iirc Major doesn’t live in the White House too often nowadays. He might just have the same intuition.
Do we have any proof that the messages were deleted on the instruction of the White House? I've always thought they arranged the mass-deletion on their own - but it was a very busy time and I might well have missed the bit about them being ordered to delete them.
All true. However, there's a difference between being told/ordered to do a thing, and thinking (on your own), "Hey if I do this thing it'll cover my ass and help my side". OP is claiming they were told to do it - and that may be true, but I'd like some proof toward that.
What’s more likely? That they all independently had the same idea to commit the same crime at the same time, or that their ringleader told them to do it, so they did it?
This is likely bullshit, your milage may vary…but I though they used encrypted black berries. Its on a private network/vpn separate from civilian traffic.
It seems like Trump threw a fit about it at one time.
She was known as a socialite around NYC, and grew up well-off in Long Island as the daughter of, believe it or not, the owner of the #1 cesspool company. So yes, the killer is fairly affluent.
She tried to hide out in Long Island with mummy and daddy. They probably should have taught her about consequences and self-control when she was growing up. Affluenza strikes again.
I meant that I didn’t know we still built/maintained what are still called cesspools. It sounds like a name for something that used to be common but is no longer built because we have modern sewage treatment plants.
No, that’s very specific and you can put an exact number on someone who is in the top 2%
I’m referring to statements in this thread, where we don’t know shit about this ladies finances, other than her dad has a “successful” business. People making assumptions about her wealth. What does being a “socialite” even mean? She likes going to art galleries and events? Spoiler alert - anyone can do that, don’t assume these are things that cost money (other than what it costs to catch a train/cab/Uber to get there, and possibly price of admission, which might not even be a lot either).
She’s going to prison for a few years, she clearly ain’t got the resources many people here assume she does.
I’m not sure why you insist on arguing that point. I don’t agree with your logic that she “ain’t” got resources simply because she’s going to prison for murdering someone. Avoiding prison for murder is more of a top .1% kind of thing and nobody has suggested that.
My problem is with people assuming she is wealthy and what does that even mean, it’s such a relative term. She just looks like a nobody to me who did something bad and will pay the consequences, like most other people. I just don’t understand why people are throwing her into the top 2% of this country based on this headline
There is an enormous difference between “clocking” hours and “working” those hours. I’ve known some of those types with ridiculous amounts of overtime hours for municipalities and I don’t believe for a second they aren’t just stealing from tax payers.
It’s absolutely just stealing from tax payers at that level. 7 years of 95-100 hour weeks would kill you if you actually worked those hours, even as a cop.
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