Most Americans can’t afford even a ‘minimal quality of life’ anymore, depressing new study finds

NY Post ^ | 7/05/25 | Andrew Court

[Bon of Babble]

Yes, the friend had an offer at a clinic at the border of Mexico and California - a good salary ($90k for a resident, usually it’s more like $70k) - and paying off of her student loans if she stayed for nine years. I thought she should take it. They said they had grant money to pay for this - wondering if it will be cut in the Trump era.

She chose a far more prestigious university in California to do her residency, making $70 - with the student loan intact and looming.

[vivenne]

Uh, I wasn’t talking about myself so no need to make it personal. But, it’s clear you don’t know about a lot about human physiology so I shouldn’t expect much other than a superior attitude from uou

[plain talk]

"“I get tired of the ‘Stop your Starbucks latte habit’ [advice], because in reality it’s not people’s fault,” financial planner Laura Lynch told CNBC in relation to the study. “The structures around us have created an expectation of a lifestyle that is increasingly becoming unreachable for folks.”"

Therein lies the problem. Exercise discipline and ignore how friends and neighbors are spending their money. Live within your means, save and invest and you can retire comfortably later.

[Danie_2023]

“”Uh, I wasn’t talking about myself so no need to make it personal. But, it’s clear you don’t know about a lot about human physiology so I shouldn’t expect much other than a superior attitude from uou””

I wasn’t talking about you and didn’t make anything personal. Just wondering why you took it that way.

[StAnDeliver]

Multi. Family. Housing.

The charts don't lie.

An intention to build multi-family over the past 10 years (and the only construction that accelerated during the Plandemic) at the expense of allowing young people to own their own home, because that makes every other homeowner a conservative, at least fiscally.

Go on Reddit for 10 minutes and drill down to your nearest metro's sub-reddit. Every other post is a complaint about not being able to afford a starter home, and the other ones are the perpetual slum dwelling wannabe antifa who will never own real property in their entire lives and would rather game themselves to death while bullets ricochet around their ghetto. Schadenfreude.

"This room cost $2,000 a month
You can believe it, man, it's true
Somewhere there's a landlord's laughing till he wets his pants" - Lou Reed, Dirty Boulevard

[vivenne]

You might want to re-read your post for the answer.

[MayflowerMadam]

I’ll have to check out haircut video. I did some basic cutting watching videos during Covid. It got me by and I didn’t do a half-bad job of it.

Cost of groceries is horrendous, as you said. With both of us pushing 80, medical costs is our biggest expenditure.

When we bought this house, we were told we’d have Xfinity internet. All our neighbors had it. Once we we closed on the house and moved in, Xfinity said they didn’t want to run the line to our house from the road but if we wanted to pay for it the cost would be $7K-$10K.

Until we straightened that out, our ONLY option for getting news was DirecTV so we reluctantly signed a 2-year contract.

Finally got Xfinity internet (at no cost to us), but it took intercession by TN Attorney General’s office.

[Eleutheria5]

Sounds dated. How recent is the data?

[Danie_2023]

“”You might want to re-read your post for the answer.””

I did. You apparently chose to make it personal as if it applied to you. I was actually thinking about a neighbor of mine... who, a week after triple bypass heart surgery, was eating hot dogs when I visited her. I’m pretty sure that hot dogs were not on her list of doctor-approved foods to eat right after that surgery. And yes, she does have a weight problem. But one that I suspect is due to total lack of activity or exercise.

Sorry you took it as if I was referring to you... but I don’t know you and have no reason to have applied that ‘TO’ you.

[Mozzafiato]

I don’t see hiw Elon’s new America H-1B Party solves this problem

[Reynoldo]

Wow, you’ve really boiled it down.
Nice job of drilling down to the basics.

[spintreebob]

“Skyrocketing costs over the past two decades are to blame”

Let’s see a graphic.
Skyrocketing cost of US Debt.
Skyrocketing cost of Appropriations.
Skyrocketing cost of Entitlements, especially Medicaid.

Then compare that with the alleged Skyrocketing cost of gas, fresh meat, fresh veggies, MB of computer, anything in the private sector.

[Alberta's Child]

I think an employed person in his mid-20s would easily be able to afford a lifestyle comparable to what the U.S. had in the mid-1970s.

The first problem is that you’d have to eliminate at least 90% of the things we have come to expect as part of a “minimal” standard of living these days.

The second problem is that you can’t even buy most of the things people owned back then — like a rotary phone, black & white TV, a home with no AC, a 1970s-vintage car, etc. And for most people, no travel to anywhere you can’t reach in a car.

[xzins]

Eisenhower added 0%.

That’s fascinating when you think of post war spending

[9YearLurker]

And of course his famous warning.

[xzins]

Exactly.

[Elsie]

MOST?

[Georgia Girl 2]

Its always something.