Love it!

He could have 6 kids. That’s basically the only way that a 5 bedroom, 3 bath house makes any kind of sense. Putting yourself through that for 20 years would be soulcrushing.

40K is a little below median US income for a family of four. I have cited examples where this income gets eaten up quickly in today’s living expenses. Big house, car/truck/SUV(s),
Health/Dental, School costs, Food, etc. If the house is new(er) and the guy has no alternate source of income, I would say he is jammed. This is a blog for nice people, so I won’t use the prefix for the description of “jammed”.
I enjoyed the rapport of the bloggers in discussing this. They seemed on the same sheet. You could write the rest of the story on this guy and probably be pretty accurate on his future. You could do it times millions of people. Of course the guy could be living in an inherited family home, say one about 75 to 100 years old. A family farm? However, it appears to be the McMansion syndrome. Too bad times a million out there. We don’t see the actual family size, but is indicated a family, and the guy has worked 20 years so grown kids?
Is the post about him and working too much? Or spending too much? Or a combined thing of all of it? Are these comments parallel with what? I wrote myself into a corner here–what are we talking about exactly?

Great post!

@Mneiae: 20 years of this would indeed be soul-crushing, but this article in no way implies that he’s finished. He’s probably got another 20 years to go of this life, so imagine putting yourself through this for FORTY YEARS. Many of us have been trained to see this as great job security, lol.

@HSpencer: Think of this blog written for an alien from another planet, or an earthling from 150 years ago. What would their reaction be to this all-too-common way of life?

To each his/her own, I think…except that the planet is our commons. If a person chooses to work for a living and retire after thirty or forty years, what right do I have to judge?

My real issue with the way a lot of us in the West live is the size of our carbon footprint. We are simply consuming more than our fair share of the world’s resources. This is a chicken that will come home to roost; maybe not in our lifetime but I am worried for my daughter’s generation (she is 11).

The most pressing issue I see on the horizon is Peak Oil. When a gallon of gas is $5 or $10, something’s got to give. Then as it gets more and more scarce, we will turn to coal, which we have plenty of but America will start to look like China.

We can only slow the demise of the oil-based society, but what is next will get here eventually. McMansions and SUVs will be the dinosaurs of our age…too bad they won’t breakdown into oil.

This has brought a smile to my face, but I think it may be more of a sad smile… it has only been 2 years since I was like that.

And, as we have talked about previously here, it is something you can’t tell people about and have them understand; thinking like this has become so ingrained into our very beings…..

That makes me sad.

Yeah. I don’t really need to see having such a wickedly high and unrealistic net worth to live comfortably. Unless you’re more materialistic than any conspiracy banker you can think of, maybe. But I can live comfortably on a mid to low five figure annual cash flow.

@Holme – Of course it would. It used to be like that 200 years ago. It was actually a serious problem in the early stages to entice people to work more than they had to. When they’d earned enough they simply wouldn’t show up for work next day.

Today this inconvenient problem has been fixed. People are contractually obligated to work. If not they lose their benefits, job … some are so far gone they even lose their friends or self worth if they don’t go to work.

Also consider that people would have to work to accumulate enough assets to invest in the first place.

I’d also think wrapping one’s mind around this is most challenging when one is salaried. It takes a greater leap of perception to go from employed to self-employed than it does to go from self-employed to financially independent.

Money funk…try 5 in 956 sq feet. That’s a little tight Says my wife.

You forgot:

It also says he drives an hour each way to his job, that means he’s spending almost half his day on his job. How exhausting, no wonder he just sits on the couch all night and watches TV.

I love the article. My partner and I have been living in our RV for the last 2 years (280 sqft) and see how so many are shackled to their jobs for 30-40 years because of the suposed american dream. We both work (me part-time)and have 4 houses that we rent so people that don’t know us think we are crazy but others find it very amazing.

Well done, sir. Well done. Now you just need to turn it into a children’s fable and maybe we can save the future generation!

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