Things are going downhill in the mainland US (I only know about things going on in the US, so I’ll talk about it over here).
Everything I’ve seen or kept up with is just showing things in freefall. Housing, the economy, and the ability to survive is just getting more and more insane. So in no particular order:
Housing: You’re forced to deal with either overpriced houses that are basically impossible to get, especially in urban areas, and if you get lucky and find a house, you’ll be paying up the ass to maintain and renovate it, because shit is more expensive now. If you try a rural place, maybe you’ll finally find something more affordable, at the cost of accessibility and lack of decent paying jobs. You could try getting a mobile home, but people are getting stiffed with mobile homes (or whatever other names they have for it now) because if you don’t own the land under it, you’re renting out the land, even through you have a mobile home, and have a lot less places to even have it at. RVs and travel vans, more expensive now, and since people are catching on that this can be an option if you’re solo dolo and trying to save a little money while maybe trying to find a place to live, that’s also more expensive.
So where are you gonna live?
Economy: Savings aren’t going to do anything. It seems like unless you already had a paid off home or had invested early into some BS crypto or other investments before like 2018 or so, you’re screwed there too. I’ve never even touched a stock before. Not like I ever had the extra money or knowledge to do so back then anyway. Every year, money is worth less and less and you need more and more of it to maintain the life you were already living previously.
Maybe you can cut back on things. Good luck. Internet is a necessity. You need a phone to at least call 911 and keep yourself connected through a phone number of some kind. You need a car to live in the USA and you need car insurance (some states you have to have it or they suspend your license), public transport is only good in certain areas of the US, so it’s more of a struggle to use the busses or other public transport to get places otherwise. Phone bill, light bill, RENT. At some point, if you cut out everything but your main bills, you’re just miserable. I understand starting out after high school or if you try ths college route, but it really fucks with you mentally when you scrape and claw and try your best, and as you’re maybe finally figuring things out, shit gets worse…
Jobs: Noone is hiring, unless you want to make barely anything. Most places you can’t even survive on $20/hr alone, and even then, so much eats into what you could be saving. You have to have multiple jobs or a “side hustle” or start your own business to get anywhere. Most businesses don’t last a year. Why do we need everyone to start their own business? Gig work is bullshit too, you may have flexibility with work hours, but people do it as their main job and give up healthcare and a lot of basic protections and of course, don’t make a lot of base pay. It’s just insane how much we have to grind it out in our lives.
I’m going to have to get a 2nd job very soon, but what is there to do that won’t fuck up my main job rn?
There’s a lot more, but I’m trying to carve out some kinda niche for myself… I’m getting old at this point. I don’t want to have to grind it out until I’m dead in the ground…
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This post hits home for me too. I remember being a kid during better times, having so much hope for the future and all the great things that were possible. Now I’m just trying to avoid being homeless.
Well one thing you got going for you: you avoided the stock market this year. It’s been tanking hard and I think we officially hit recession territory last week, so count yourself lucky that you dodged that bullet.
But I hear what you’re saying, in these times you can’t just work & save. Unless you have a great paying job, that’s just not enough to keep up.
I read in an article today that the UK has seen a 40% surge in citizenship applications from Americans trying to get out of here. The problem is you gotta be a certain degree of rich just to relocate. For those of us barely treading water we’re screwed.
You’ve pretty much zeroed in on the issues I face now. Although I solved one big problem (rent cost) by moving to a very small town next month where it’s literally half of what I’ve been paying, the jobs are shit. They are crappy where I live now too, but I’ll come out ahead at the end of the month with the much cheaper rent. But this is a stop-gap measure and short of winning the lottery (which I rarely play) or some mob boss paying me $100,000 to take out his rival, my future is pretty much fucked. I use Obamacare and I’m paying off student loans through an income-based plan that keeps the payments very low, but I have a lurking suspicion that President Musk has plans for those programs that will likely complicate my life with extreme prejudice. I’m just tired of basically living in a Kafka novel for the last 10 or 12 years. I’ve had a few nice girlfriends, I’ve been married once (not my thing, I discovered), had a house, some great dogs, a couple of cool jobs. Now, I see nothing ahead of me but increasing poverty, bad health, and I’m sure no more girlfriends — online dating was hell on earth for me and I’m fine being alone after that. Other than a few things I wish I’d done, like visit Japan, I’ve done most things on my bucket list. Seems pointless to just keep plodding along. Any wounded animal (except a human) knows when it’s time to lie down and give up the ghost.
I don’t know how on some things, but as a white man we’re the most protected class of the part of the country I’m in….. and I own my house. So I have to call out economic anxiety for what it is, anxiety.
Housing is the only one I’m not worried about because I have enough equity to bug out. I could sell to a cash for houses place and get enough for some land and live in a shed. It wouldn’t be great, but I’d live.
Work though, I’m not sure really. I have a skillset that is still in such high demand I’m putting out six applications a week. I think I’m going to find work. $20 an hour is actually what I’m targetting right now. I could not only live on that, I could accomplish my goals on that (if my wife also made that.)
I’m 20 years into my career, that’s semi retirement time as far as I’m concerned, time to focus more on family and what matters more to me. All this nonsense going on? I was being told about it back in 2012 when I first got to college, the universities knew ALL about it. Academics saw it coming.
People don’t want to listen. There’s a hatred in this country for people who actually pay attention to social trends. It’s why I’ve had this plan for so many years. I knew it was coming 12 years ago.
It’s also temporary, everything is. Part of being who I am is knowing my history, seeing what happened 100 years ago and history repeating itself. When wealth gets concentrated like this, it’s a sickness. So I know I’m going to live long enough to see the other side of it.
Maybe I’m sick, but someone has to tell the story, someone has to try and keep it from happening again next time. It’s stupid that someone failed last time.
after further thought though, you make a really good point about trying to keep up with repairs, there are plenty of things I can’t keep up on, especially on what I’ve been making for the past few years. This year I need to put a new roof on, and replace my clothes washer, and I have to replace flooring in two rooms.
Plus at some point I’ve got to go nail a tarp to my roof until the roofer can get here. So that’ll be fun.
I generally have no clue how any of this is still functioning because even though things still “work” to some extent in terms of people paying for food and housing each month and getting by somehow, well, things get worse arguably day by day in the current environment we have and everyone at large has to get much more crafty than beforehand in order to make sure that everything aligns just right in order to actually take care of their needs, compared to the seemingly very short period in human history in which 40 hours a week not only working but thinking about work was enough…
Now, for all markets pretty much, in terms of housing, jobs, food, the market for time if that’s a thing, the market for certifications/qualifications if that’s a thing, all of these things seem at least somewhat dire to the point in which there are more and more jobs being created out of the lack of jobs or anything else that fits the bill and the necessity to nonetheless obtain them. And this seems constant across… all ages, pretty much. The people in their 70s going homeless for one reason or another certainly don’t seem exempt from this.
It’s a forced kind of thing in that you have to either get to know these markets like the back of your hand or face really bad living quality, which translates to at least somewhat worse life quality, much worse if it’s without housing arguably. Not to mention, of course, the amount of efficiency and lack of errors you need to have in order to make your way out of this situation. Many people, one way or another, kind of give up after that point to not much fault of their own, and there will be more.
It’s to the point in which I wonder how much they can keep these unemployment and unhoused statistics on the down low when everything just seems the opposite of stable in this country. But then other countries apparently are “worse” somehow in terms of getting by day to day, this one apparently having the “best odds”, so people like me stay here…?
Regardless, you’re still human in all of this and you’re well worth listening to if that helps. The challenges of the current time don’t take away from your character necessarily (or at least hopefully), they add onto it.
Although, yeah, ought to specify that *my* situation is the opposite of stable, so maybe the country is actually doing fine for all I know. It’s just surprising to see all of this.