A personal question, how much do you make, but not really.

You guys need to read the post and stop intermingling my thoughts and your feelings.
"That kind of success only happens with hard work and skills, abilities, and knowledge/wisdom I don't have. But it was the 'financially responsible' comment that got me. "
  -DrBoost
I commended him for doing that, while recognizing the work and dedication it takes to be able to be in that position. I don't know the scale of his business, so $200K could be one days gross revenue, or 10 years. But either way, being able to float a business and some employees for that period of time shows (I've said this before, you just didn't read it?) a lot of experience, intelligence, business acumen, etc. 
Again (third time actually) the issue is the insulting way he groups everyone, including his employees into a basket of being financially irresponsible because they can't work a year with no pay. Then saying they should be the ones to work for free next time.

@Boost_crazy: You asked where I gleaned pearls of wisdom? Are you talking about the real world examples I actually mentioned? Is the fact that most business can't survive 12 months with no income, then seeing it happen around me for the last 362 days not correct?

But I see that I'm in the minority here thinking that calling a large swathe of the population not financially responsible because they can't match your bank-roll is not a nice way to be. I'm backing away from the table now. 

In reply to DrBoost :

I'm sorry, but you completely misinterpreted what he said, then doubled down on it. 
 

He said that he invested $200k into his company BY not taking is salary for a year. He kept largely unneeded employees on the payroll instead. You misread that to be that he took no salary AND put another $200K into his business. Your words...

You had $200K to put into the business AFTER 52 week with no pay.

As for the the fiscally irresponsible comment, I took it to mean the general attitude lately that employers are more responsible for the employee's financial well being than the employees themselves. It's not an insult, it's reality. It's not a secret, a large swath of the population is financially irresponsible. Over half of Americans can't afford to cover an unexpected $1000 expense, let alone being out of work for 3 or 6 months. That's not the employer's fault, that is poor financial planning. The knee jerk reaction is "they need to be paid more then," but I'd bet most of them would be in the same situation if you doubled their pay. I took Dean's comment as everyone is sticking their hand out when times are good, forgetting that he carried them when times were bad, with little concern about more bad times around the corner. 

DrBoost said:

In reply to dean1484 :

You had $200K to put into the business AFTER 52 week with no pay.

I can't speak for Dean, but I suspect you misinterpreted his comments.

My take was that Dean a) did not pay himself for a year, and b) used $200k of his personal funds to pay his employees despite the fact that there wasn't enough business coming in to (mathematically) justify their pay.

I don't see anything there that warrants an accusation of wrongdoing. Sounds like pretty decent behavior to me. He most likely wasn't obligated to do that, and chose to do so as an investment in his employees' loyalty. Hopefully they recognize the sacrifice he made and return the loyalty.

He also mentioned having the employees work without pay next time, but that is very plainly tongue-in-cheek, and again, not really something that warrants any finger pointing. 

In reply to DrBoost :

You are making a lot of assumptions. 
 

I was in an almost identical position at one point. I put $350,000 into my business to keep it afloat, and kept unproductive employees on staff for a year trying to keep the business together. But I didn't have that much cash sitting around just because I happened to be a business owner. I BORROWED it. On my name.  I put my home up for collateral. 
 

And a year later they stabbed me in the back and quit because they thought I should also give them a big Christmas bonus.

That was over 20 years ago. I'm still paying on that debt. 
 

I'm not complaining about them.  They didn't understand what it takes to run a business.  They didn't understand the risk I had taken on their behalf. They didn't understand how much I cared, how much I tried.
 

If I had it to do again, I'd have fired all of them a year earlier.  Not out of spite.  It would have been deeply painful.  But it would have been the smart business decision.  It's what would have kept my business alive.

I had to close my business.  If I had avoided taking on that debt, my business would have survived.  And I probably would have been able to retire before now.

I learned a valuable lesson. I learned that as a businessman sometimes you have to make the hard decisions.  And people will hate you for it. But they may hate you anyway.

Its way too easy to look over the fence and assume business are all wealthy and privileged. 

SV reX said:

Its way too easy to look over the fence and assume business are all wealthy and privileged. 

That's very true. I'm fortunate in that my employer is very transparent. Some of our employees are owners, via a buy-in, and all of them work right alongside the rest of us. There is no shadowy figure rubbing his hands together in comic book expression of greed.

If you claim your employees "just need to practice better financial responsibility" then you've lost the argument. 

DarkMonohue said:

SV reX said:

Its way too easy to look over the fence and assume business are all wealthy and privileged. 

That's very true. I'm fortunate in that my employer is very transparent. Some of our employees are owners, via a buy-in, and all of them work right alongside the rest of us. There is no shadowy figure rubbing his hands together in comic book expression of greed.

And to add onto that, it's so easy to have just one bad example poison every other for you, since it's literally human nature. One of my EMS jobs was literally comic-book greedy when it came to our work, and until I was fired was handing me a trail of minor infractions just to pressure me. Even now, I still feel the affects from it- my acting CNO had to hand me a list of my tardies just yesterday going back over a year when I was still in college (3 total!), and I immediately got defensive because I got so used to having to defend myself from past bosses for only that couple of years. I'm that way with communications too, I get everything in writing because it became a survival mechanism too. If you haven't been under the gun like that, it's easy to claim your workforce is being angry or uncompromising.

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

I hear you, and that's fair. But don't assume my employees were stressed or under the gun until you've asked me a few questions. I paid twice the going rate, offered the best benefits in the area, made sure they never missed a paycheck (even when I was unable to pay myself). For years. 
 

As far as my own tainted perspective?  That's fair too. My personal experiences are limited to only a few things. But I also get to listen to a lot of people here complaining frequently, and it sounds quite similar. 
 

I only offer that story as a counterpoint to the complaining about companies. There really are some companies out there working very hard to be supportive of their employees. 

DrBoost said:

But I see that I'm in the minority here thinking that calling a large swathe of the population not financially responsible because they can't match your bank-roll is not a nice way to be. I'm backing away from the table now. 

Except that is not what he said at all.

Steve_Jones said:

DrBoost said:

But I see that I'm in the minority here thinking that calling a large swathe of the population not financially responsible because they can't match your bank-roll is not a nice way to be. I'm backing away from the table now. 

Except that is not what he said at all.

Never let facts get in the way of emotion. 

IBTL

I started my current job at $16.10/hr. After becoming a Journeyman in the trade and promotions after. With additional non-merit based increases and CELs it is hard to define my % of increase.

Recently we got a 8% raise due to a survey of the cost of living in the local towns. Unfortunately, it is not nearly enough to keep us within a 30 minute rural commute (plus an ~hour of time in traffic each way to get on/off the island).

Great berkeleying job though. So damn cool.

I wonder how hard it is to live within your means at $30k a year. Being poor is rather expensive if I remember my upbringing properly lol

not sure its possible on 30k in a lot of areas, without having 17 roommates or something

yupididit said:

Being poor is rather expensive if I remember my upbringing properly

Very wise comment...while I'm buying bulk at Costco, somebody that's struggling is buying their stuff from a quickie mart at many times the price per unit.

 When I worked at a gas station over a decade ago, I had a lot of people paying in SNAP/EBT for little stuff.

yupididit said:

I wonder how hard it is to live within your means at $30k a year. Being poor is rather expensive if I remember my upbringing properly lol

I don't think you can really do it anymore without the luck that I had. I basically was for 6+ years before inflation, and I made it work via:

• Renting rooms from best friends/family whom I could trust with my life for $400 and $350/mo, respectively.
• Having a reliable car I had owned from new that I could trust.
• Never having a gap in employment and always getting in my 40 hours/week.
• Once said car was paid off, having no debt (That wasn't from an eventual ER Visit).
• Having supplemental income always be just that.
• Knowing how to cook and maintain my things.

It wasn't a challenge, but more because I had already been living like that before I moved out so it was "easy" in a sense that now I was just on my own- knowing I could always turn to family is also a massive benefit. Of note, despite all that and steadily making money, things would happen that would also decimate my savings; that ER visit, even with a lump sum cash payment chopping the cost down to 40% of what it was initially, still put me back $1,200 which was 3 weeks of pay on a Paramedic wage at 40 hours a week.

My company laid off two yesterday from my local office of 80 people. (Company total is around 1,700).

I quite like both of them and have no idea what to say to them other than "wish you well"... but I've not said that because it'll sound berkeleying hollow..

At a partner meeting this spring the CEO said he was advised by the previous CEO that those decisions are really hard but you have to consider that 78 we're spared while two were let go. The health of the corporation is most important. It's totally rational and true but being on the end of that layoff notice probably doesn't feel so good...  despite all the prior claims of "family".

In reply to yupididit :

I wonder how hard it is to live within your means at $30k a year. Being poor is rather expensive if I remember my upbringing properly lol
 

I remember that it was much more expensive to not live within my means when I was poor. Buying stuff that you can't afford on credit, and paying stupid interest rates can put you in a hole fast. I paid for living like I wasn't poor for long after I wasn't poor. I never blamed my employer.

I remember when I first found out I was poor. I was in HS and apparently a phenomenal wrestler at the time. So a nicer school wanted me to go wrestle there and that school had so the cool stuff and facilities. I was currently at a school where all the poors went who also happened to all be kids who are POC. We called the other school the "White School" cause it was like 98% white students. Somehow they were able to bend the zoning district rules to let me attend because of my athletics. The schools were within 10 miles of each other in the same city just zoned for opposite neighborhood types. Anyway, I get there and meet all these happy children with cars, nice clothes, who only had jobs because they wanted to or were getting punished lol. Making friends there was an experience that I don't regret because I was able to see how different life can be. I ended up breaking and dislocatinf my elbow my senior year. All those scholarships went as fast as they came lol

When you've always been poor sometimes you just don't know anything but how to survive while poor and doing unwise E36 M3 to help you feel less poor (living outside your means). Of course you can't blame employers as a whole but you also can't always blame poor people too.

Dare I side with the poor folks with the "victim mentality"? I mean, a lot of them are victims in some way. Please go easy on me for that last statement, you know who you are 

Time to lock this one and give everyone a timeout?

Living on $30K isn't hard in some rural areas. I know lots of people doing it in AL and GA.

A very close friend is a single mom with 2 teenagers. Owns her own home, all 3 of their (older) cars are paid for.  She lives on $33,600. 
 

There are a huge number of people nationwide living solely on SS fixed incomes. That's a lot less than $30K.

My son bought a house in Metro ATL 3 years ago when he was making less than $30K. 

I've lived on less than $30k a year. I was married with a couple of kids at the time. No food stamps but the kids did get free lunch at school. My house payment was $425 a month. It wasn't too bad in the 90s. There were plenty of fun times to be had, you just had to pay attention to where the money went. 

Currently, in Charleston, SC, a single person could probably squeak by on $30k, but it would be tight. You would have to have roommates to drive down the housing costs. You would need a cheap car and the ability to fix it yourself. You would need to eat fairly inexpensively. I don't see any way a family could survive on less than $40-$50k.  

That said, there aren't many places paying less than $15/hr around here. Even Amazon is starting pickers at $35k. A married couple, both employed in starter jobs should bring home over $60k. My middle son and his fiance are going to be getting married soon. Their joint income is over $80k.

I'm offering $18/hr as a starting wage with zero experience and can't find any takers. 

Unemployment is also a massive issue too; when I lived on $30K I was in Nebraska, and Omaha currently has about a 2% unemployment rate. The lack of labor is so bad the state is having to do some progressive things with it's housing market and renting JUST To try and get as much labor in as possible. The chimney sweep I just hired for work is a one-man band because of that alone.

In reply to yupididit :

Ha, I was actually on the opposite side! I'm a white dude from money but had originally grown up with farm and rural kids as my best friends; when I went to the rich white school in the city half of my friends were the poorer kids they had to accept for federal grant money. Half the time over weekends I'd hop in my lexus and drive out to hangouts in Bellevue or North Omaha which were SUPPOSED to be crime-riddled, yet my nice RX300 was never messed with. I particularly remember how those dudes couldn't think past a week's time, how shocked many were when they finally saw my home and where I lived, and how one in particular was effectively scared of success (in that he was always afraid he'd loose it later) which kept him from pushing for much.

In reply to SV reX :

Still tho, that demands owning your own home outright, so that's a hell of a leg-up. Like the Midwest for me also has similar leg-ups; living here is stupid cheap, and just for the sake of the discussion (and because I lived rural for 2 decades) I also know small town America doesn't offer much in the way of job improvement.

yupididit said:

Dare I side with the poor folks with the "victim mentality"? I mean, a lot of them are victims in some way. Please go easy on me for that last statement, you know who you are 

I grew up very poor, and many people I grew up with still are. I can side with the "victim mentality" and understand why people feel that way, as it is tough to break the cycle. My issue is when people DO break it, they are suddenly the "bad rich guy that took advantage of people" vs being someone that was tired of being a "victim" and figured it out.

yupididit said:

I wonder how hard it is to live within your means at $30k a year. Being poor is rather expensive if I remember my upbringing properly lol

Depends on where you're trying to do it. DC area? Probably not likely. Podunk Iowa? Probably pretty likely. But finding a job that only pays $30k a year isn't very likely around here. 

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

I didn't say she owned her home outright. She doesn't. She has a big mortgage. There was no leg up. 

In reply to yupididit :

When you've always been poor sometimes you just don't know anything but how to survive while poor and doing unwise E36 M3 to help you feel less poor (living outside your means). Of course you can't blame employers as a whole but you also can't always blame poor people too.
 

My experience was similar. I grew up poor and it was normal for me. I knew others had a lot more than I did, but I just accepted that as how things were. I was happy and appreciated what I had. Owning a home or buying a new car were things for other people. Getting ahead meant getting more credit so that I could buy more stuff that I couldn't really afford. I could afford the monthly payments, which I thought was the same thing. Looking back, I realize that I was buying things that I couldn't afford to impress people who didn't care or matter. But at the time, it was important to look like I was doing better than I was. Changing my income did not change that behavior, I just bought nicer things that I couldn't afford as I made more money. Getting out of poverty took more than just changing my income, I had to change my behaviors.