“That’s a really nice bag,” I said, taking a sip of my light bill.
May 21, 2017 1:50 PM   Subscribe

 
It's no wonder, we live in a society where we're bombarded day and night with messages about what we should spend our money on. There's plenty said about how to be money conscious and save, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to how we're told to buy and spend and ask our doctor if it's right for us.

Couple this with the fact precious few people actually have the money to spend on frivolites and you end up with hand-wringing articles about avocado toast and millennialz not buying enough diamonds. I mean, true fact: my wife and I are currently going through a tough financial time and have turned to the old standby of selling our blood plasma just to have a bit of cash to spend on things to make us feel nice. That's then the other side of the coin, you ought to take "feeling nice" into account because, as shown in this article, if you don't you end up skimming nice feelings off of what was supposed to be the electric bill.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 2:16 PM on May 21, 2017 [17 favorites]


Yep. Been there, done that. I'm sure the comments here will include the usual number of judgey snark about poor people making stupid decisions, so that'll be fun.

It wasn't until I lucked into a job that paid me enough money to cover basic necessities, that I could take breath and try to think about saving for a future. Until then, just staying alive and not raped was the most I could manage.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 2:21 PM on May 21, 2017 [37 favorites]


This is a clever article, and makes several excellent points using quirky concepts. I fed my phone bill to my grandson, just this week, but no kidding, it was only a part of the phone bill. I love the idea of the handbag / car payment. With me, there is no one to impress, in any way, and I long ago gave up trying to look fashionable. Now it is a contest, how little I can spend and have a good life, in fact it is a contest to live the best with the least. As long as I can get out to look at the natural world, every now and again, I can live well with a lot less than most people crave as "have to haves."

My kids are appalled with me, talking between themselves about how I am living with less and less. They are in an uncomfortable middle class ledge, and it seems as knowledgeable as they are, they don't perceive the middle class as a dwindling effect. One has just begun to assess how much it costs her to buy expensive brands at the grocery store. I pointed out to her that places like Trader Joes, and Winco job out their name items, and those items are the same stuff as brand items. Now I see off brand dish soap yes, and Winco sour cream and yogurt for a family gathering. Those three buys represent $10 in a single shopping experience. Why save, well, so that you have ransom to pay the robbers who are tightening the noose daily, on our ability to exist.
posted by Oyéah at 2:27 PM on May 21, 2017 [18 favorites]


Samantha Irby has been here before (hooray!). I confess to mentally adding a lot of foul language to this essay, which made it much more entertaining. Bitches gotta eat, but they must have roses, too.
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:38 PM on May 21, 2017 [10 favorites]


With me, there is no one to impress, in any way, and I long ago gave up trying to look fashionable. Now it is a contest, how little I can spend and have a good life, in fact it is a contest to live the best with the least. As long as I can get out to look at the natural world, every now and again, I can live well with a lot less than most people crave as "have to haves."

For some of us it can indeed be a contest to see how little you can spend and have a good life.

For others of us, it is a necessity because after 8 years of being underemployed, and your rent having gone up all that time, you don't HAVE the choice but to forgo eating out at restaurants ever or only going to movies if it's one of your dear friend's birthdays and if they go to Alamo you just sort of wince because it's more expensive and then you maybe get one Coke and share popcorn with your buddy when they overbuy food becuase that coke is all you can afford.

Living on less when you want to feels smart and virtuous and pat-yourself-on-the-back. Living on less when you have no choice in the matter feels dull and gray and bleak and depressing as FUCK.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:38 PM on May 21, 2017 [114 favorites]


They just said they fed the phone bill to their grandson, I think they're poor enough to have an opinion. Let's not do the Misery Olympics.
posted by milk white peacock at 2:50 PM on May 21, 2017 [37 favorites]




Yeah this is sadly similar to my life. I drifted a lot in my 20s but generally was happy with what little I had, making the most of having a used book, my imagination, my freedom and my experiences to make me happy. I basically become an expert information gatherer and pirate and stole everything I could via the Internet throughout college and grad school because I was so poor and lacking in familial support that I had to in order to be on the same footing technologically as my peers.

After I got my first decent salary in my mid 20s I bought everything I never had growing up. I wasted money on eating out at nice restaurants almost nightly. I bought dishes I never used and a new car that I never really wanted. Now I earn a stable middle class salary and my problem is I've worked so goddamn long and hard (whether it was via earning an education or taking on side jobs or what not) to get this wage that I can't enjoy anything like I did when I was poorer and didn't care about my future or possessions and just did whatever I wanted that made me happy. I'm a prisoner to my own materialism simply because I feel I "must" be this way in order to be considered a functional and desirable member of society. Because let's be honest, there are vagabonds who have and desire nothing and then there all the well-to-do who can simply quit their lives and travel around at their leisure only to return when they please and the way the two stem perceived are vastly different.
posted by Young Kullervo at 3:34 PM on May 21, 2017 [7 favorites]


It's no wonder, we live in a society where we're bombarded day and night with messages about what we should spend our money on

So people are basically Homer Simpson on new billboard day? Eh.
posted by jpe at 3:38 PM on May 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


I read the article for a change which is why I'm not commenting. (This is me "not commenting" btw). Wouldn't make the same choices; wouldn't consider condemnation. Poverty is hard and we mentally salami-slice it for innumerable reasons, the old trite-but-true standby "there's always someone worse off" being one and the craving for a bit of human dignity for another. In my experience(s), it's easy not to be able to recognise how impoverished you are. Of course I've had the lifelong luxuries of being tall, white, male and handsome no dependants, ymmv massively dear reader and I have your back regardless fwiw.

The only good poverty is that outdated popular caricature of the starving Uni student lifestyle, since there's at least some chance it might inculcate some empathy in people who could one day do something to address it in others.
posted by comealongpole at 3:42 PM on May 21, 2017


The pseudo poverty of student life can just as easily lead people to trivialize real poverty. "I ate ramen sometimes when I was in college, so how dare those people ever eat steak".
posted by idiopath at 3:45 PM on May 21, 2017 [36 favorites]



The pseudo poverty of student life can just as easily lead people to trivialize real poverty.


QFT. The difference between being "broke", a temporary state, and being poor, especially in the case of generational poverty, are stark.
posted by dysh at 4:09 PM on May 21, 2017 [73 favorites]


The author and I must be about the same age, because all the items she name-checked rang true to my childhood. My maternal grandparents died in the past few years, and even after what seemed like at least a decade of one-income retirement, there was still money left over. My father recently retired very comfortably with two pensions (military and state). I look around at my generation (particularly the younger end) and I just don't see how most of us are going to be able to make it to retirement. It's the reason proposed cuts to the safety net are so incredibly cruel- there is nothing else people can do!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:29 PM on May 21, 2017 [19 favorites]


Yeah, thinking about my grandparents, they never really wanted for stuff, even after retirement, thanks to their pensions and Social Security, yet they only ever worked factory jobs. (One did QA, the other ran a stamping machine)

Even after one passed, there was still enough money for a reasonably new car, the house, a cell phone, cable, and plenty of food, though it did require a bit of care for the first time in their life since their children left the nest.

It seems like even without kids in the picture the vast majority have to take care to watch their budget these days. I think a very large part of that is the cost of housing being so much higher than it was. It certainly seemed a lot less onerous in the middle of the country where affordable housing still exists, even accounting for the lower wages. (I realize that isn't an option for a lot of people for whatever reason, and even if it was, an influx of people drives housing prices out of whack with the pay available quite rapidly)
posted by wierdo at 5:17 PM on May 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


It's no wonder, we live in a society where we're bombarded day and night with messages about what we should spend our money on.

I seriously don't think that's it. Millennials grew up in the Age of Advertising; this is a savvy consumer group. But the Boomer model of "put away 10 cents for every dollar you earn" is broken, busted and long gone, and there is no other cultural model for making it though adulthood. Loads of millenials are never going to own a home, rent is proportionally higher than its ever been in US history, student debt is eating 20% of every paycheck. Who's wrong to feel like "save for a rainy day" is old, irrelevant financial advice when everything else they've been told about how money is supposed to work has turned out to be bullshit?
posted by DarlingBri at 5:42 PM on May 21, 2017 [45 favorites]


It certainly seemed a lot less onerous in the middle of the country where affordable housing still exists, even accounting for the lower wages.

I'm from the middle of the country, and this magical land of affordable housing just doesn't exist. Sure, it's "affordable" if it's a shack in a small town where there are no jobs.

Who's wrong to feel like "save for a rainy day" is old, irrelevant financial advice when everything else they've been told about how money is supposed to work has turned out to be bullshit?

It's not just that we think the advice is bullshit. It's that it often doesn't feel like it matters, because it's advice for people with more money and more security than we have. I put money away when I can - but the amounts are small. It will help when I have a minor setback, but it's not going to get me anywhere near a house or a comfortable retirement.

That said, I think that even trying to figure out why millenials don't save buys into a false narrative. Millenials are actually pretty frugal. The idea that we're frittering away our futures on quotidian luxuries like lattes and avocado toasts is just something that people came up with to blame us for having our futures stolen.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:05 PM on May 21, 2017 [48 favorites]


I’m still like this: Still buying hardcover books with no discount, still daydreaming about what I’m going to spend my 401(k) on when I withdraw it early, because who are we kidding, I’m not trying to live to 65, are you nuts? I don’t have any debt because I’ve never owned anything and I dropped out of college before my loans got unmanageable. I pay for everything in cash because I don’t understand A.P.R.s. My credit file was so thin from so many years of living pretty much off the grid that when I finally got around to applying for a Discover card, Experian thought I might be dead.

Oh it me. I'm finally paying off my 5k in student loans this year and had to sit down and put my learning cap back on before I understood what the next step was so's I didn't drop off the credit grid. Educating yourself about what you can save given limited income and expensive living—life in Los Angeles is expensive—isn't as simple as the boomer formula DarlingBri mentions anymore, so how do you do it?

I got lucky, but I can share how I learned. First, I got a job at Starbucks. I work there 18 hours a week and at first I needed the money I earned to cover bills and food and other routine expenses. But they have a phone number their young, dumb employees can call and basically flip a switch to open an investment portfolio with Fidelity. Through Starbucks Fidelity offers financial counselling at no cost to the employee, and that was a great start. I maxed out my matching 401k contribution (I should up it a little, now that I'm thinking about it) and bought a few stocks and basically set it up so I could forget about it. Money started saving.

Second thing I did was be long-term friends with the spouse of the founder of Digit.co. Digit is a phone and web app that hooks into your checking account, algorithmically analyzes your income and expenses, and automagically sucks out a small amount of money to a savings account. So small you don't even notice it! At first, Digit.co was free to users (they made their money off the interest accrued on the savings accounts they were managing) but now they charge a monthly fee and offer a tiny annual return on your savings. I could go on at length about how that fee is a poor tax and I'm not happy about it after enjoying the service gratis for a few years, but after a lot of consideration I think it's worth it. Here's why, and the third thing I did:

I told my checking account to email me whenever an automatic payment was made. In general, this is good security practice, but specifically regarding Digit it's vital to learning how to save. Between daily text updates from the app on my checking account balance and the daily emails from my checking account about the Digit withdrawals, I was able to eventually learn the algorithm pattern and began to see how much I could set aside without missing the dough. Digit showed me how to save on a limited budget, and that was worth the charge while I was learning. Now that I know, I don't need Digit.co anymore.

Anyway, all of that to illustrate that it's possible to eke out a savings on a limited budget in a big city, but it's not simple and there isn't anyone out there willing to explain it (without charging a fee, natch). Ya gotta suss it out, maybe over a slice of avocado toast.
posted by carsonb at 6:10 PM on May 21, 2017 [16 favorites]


When my kid was little, my husband and I got behind on everything. We owed a lot more than we were comfortable with. I made an appointment with a free credit counselor and we went expecting to be told how to budget better, though I had been trying hard.

After he looked at our careful itemization of bills, expenses, and income, however, he said, "You're not making enough money."

I'm just going to leave that there.
posted by Peach at 6:14 PM on May 21, 2017 [76 favorites]


I was sympathetic about how she spent her babysitting money and understanding about still trying to undo years of deprivation when she got her first real job. However, she lost me when I got to the part about "Still buying hardcover books with no discount, still daydreaming about what I’m going to spend my 401(k) on when I withdraw it early, because who are we kidding, I’m not trying to live to 65, are you nuts?"

She's grown up enough to recognize the problem, but apparently all she's doing with this insight is writing about it. Assuming that writing is not going to get her what she wants, i.e., to be rich, I recommend she finds a different way of coping with the fact that she grew up poor. E.g., despite the fact that she's not trying, she's likely to live to 65 and will truly appreciate money that's been stashed in a 401(k) for that past 35 years.

we live in a society where we're bombarded day and night with messages about what we should spend our money on...

and for whom we should vote, as well as endless messages about values. We're in pretty sorry shape if we are virtually incapable of applying critical thought and/or ignoring messages from those with something to sell.
posted by she's not there at 6:18 PM on May 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


I seriously don't think that's it. Millennials grew up in the Age of Advertising; this is a savvy consumer group.

Ehhh, I'm not so sure about that. I see a lot of unchecked spending occuring among my younger colleagues (early to mid 20s). Lattes from Starbucks downstairs, even if the local coffee shop down the block is cheaper. Taking an Uber to go to a bar 5 blocks away instead of walking. Recently the strap on my bag broke and my coworker commented "time to go shopping!" instead of suggesting I replace or repair the strap. I don't blame them for this attitude towards consumer goods, though. Thirty years ago you'd buy a bag to last you 5-10 years, and it would last you 5 to 10 years. This stupid bag strap broke after a year and a half. Retailers like H&M and Zara brag about having new merchandise in store every week, which is just atrocious. Nothing is made to last and everything is plastic and horrible. Add the social media factor of always feeling the need to have some sort of thing or event to post on a daily/weekly schedule, and you've got a horrible cycle of spending happening.
(Disclaimer: I am also a Millennial, albeit on the elderly side of the generation.)
posted by Rora at 6:30 PM on May 21, 2017 [9 favorites]


To be clear here, it is a contest with myself, to change my attitude, budget, find joy instead of despair, and pay homage to my elders who survived the dirty thirties. I watched them pinch pennies and thought it was not for me, but then I have learned that it is. And it is an act of defiance to do so. Because I ignore a lot of what I would be sold, if I bought in. And, it is a necessity, at least for now. My grandson is not hungry, but if I am caring for him, it is my treat, however that is done. A lot of grandparents do this, they keep the world afloat with small gifts, labors, and the gift of time. I am not well off and just cheap.
posted by Oyéah at 6:30 PM on May 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


I think a very large part of that is the cost of housing being so much higher than it was.

Elizabeth Warren has been pointing this out for years, most notably in her The Two-Income Trap. Warren notes that costs for housing, education, child care and health care have risen so much faster than inflation. This is why "Millennnials" however we define them, or Kids These Days, can't afford housing and are groaning under their student loan burdens. People who came of age in the 50's and 60's were able to buy houses in their 20's on one income because housing, education and health care didn't cost as much as they do now.

All the avocado toast and fancy handbags could disappear from the universe right now, forever, and it still wouldn't help young people afford housing. They aren't "frivolous" and their elders "wise and frugal" - younger people are facing higher prices on fixed expenses. Every "kids these days are so frivolous and spendthrift" mutterer needs to go read their Elizabeth Warren and come back later.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 6:31 PM on May 21, 2017 [80 favorites]


We should all be very clear that retirement money is mostly a matter of luck and not getting ill. If you and your spendthrift buddy both get cancer and have shitty insurance, $1,000 and $1,000,000 look like pretty much the same amount to the voracious beast lumbering your way.
posted by maxwelton at 6:41 PM on May 21, 2017 [30 favorites]


But the Boomer model of "put away 10 cents for every dollar you earn" is broken, busted and long gone, and there is no other cultural model for making it though adulthood.

A lot of people I know have latched onto the trope of get-rich-quick, whether that is from hoping for a startup to sell for billions, or whatever addle-brained celebrity scheme they might have. But it is basically a way of saying that the options available suck, so you may as well hope for a delivery of dollars from heaven.

Putting away 10 or 15 or 20 percent works great if you are earning enough for those percentages to turn into real money. It costs just as much in absolute terms to get your transmission fixed when you are earning minimum wage as it does when you are living high on the hog, but it takes a much larger relative chunk of one's income.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:09 PM on May 21, 2017 [10 favorites]


There's a group where I live who are looking into reducing functional homelessness to zero. The idea is simple. You start with the question: do you actually have enough beds/rooms in the places you need them for the homeless people you have?

Without that fundamental requirement, which is a starting point rather than a place to stop, you cannot avoid having homeless people out on the street.

The Australian government is very keen to bang on about avocado toast but fail to recognise that there are not enough jobs at the level required to provide an income that would allow many people to buy anywhere near the hearts of the major cities. Even if everyone had a job, there are not enough houses. Why focus on cities? Because that's where the economic opportunities are concentrating as the rural sector withers. Staying on the farm is less and less likely to be a stable way to make a living.

The UN estimate that a few million people a week migrate into cities around the world. Our city occupancy is almost double what it was, by population percentage, in 1950. Rents and house prices have skyrocketed accordingly. Young people are priced out because they weren't born soon enough to buy before the boom.

But let's focus on that damned avocado toast.

On review, Rosie M. Bank's entire post, thank you!
posted by nfalkner at 7:23 PM on May 21, 2017 [15 favorites]


The trick to doing money "like an adult" is that each monthly electricity bill is more expensive than the last one, regardless of how many electrics you ate. But the tax on beer only gets indexed once per financial year, and it's still a full refreshing 570ml/19oz. Aren't we always being told to pick safe, sure investments? So, there it is.
posted by turbid dahlia at 7:31 PM on May 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


This reminded me of this

When you have to choose between the light bill and not feeling like your life is all shit all the time- and this is the prevailing feeling (at least it seems that way to this gen-x person) , we as a culture are failing at something. I have no answer for it, except applause for the millenials. They seem to be doing their best with what they were handed.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 7:49 PM on May 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm a little worried by all the defeatism I see here and among my Millenial-ish friends.

No, cutting back on avocado toast isn't going to help anything. You know what is going to help? Not using credit cards. Not driving expensive cars. Not eating out more than once or twice a week. Being very careful with spending on clothes, hobbies, and travel.

I hate the style of Dave Ramsey (too religious) and Mr. Money Mustache (too preachy and absolutist). But I think they have a lot of good stuff to say. As long as you're making an adequate non-spectacular salary (and you might not be), it's totally possible to afford necessities and still save money if you're careful and smart. It's just not easy, since there's so much out there to spend money on, and credit is so readily available.

This isn't to say there's nothing the government could do to help Millenials -- of course it could, but it's not going to happen because the government is run by rich old people. Barring a surprise Warren presidency, help isn't coming anytime soon. We just have to make the best of it and figure things out as well as we can.
posted by miyabo at 7:51 PM on May 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


I concur about Ramsey, but I still listen to his podcast from time to time. The nice thing about his approach is that the math works the same no matter what your religion is.
posted by Wild_Eep at 8:03 PM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


But my savings have been totally wiped out by health problems 3 or 4 times now. I'm really thinking of moving back to Europe where at least you get to keep the money you earn. Slightly higher taxes are offset easily by the security of having health care be a fixed cost.
posted by fshgrl at 8:05 PM on May 21, 2017 [30 favorites]


A little known fact about health care bills- you can negotiate them. A few years ago I broke every bone in my right foot and they had to kill me to fix it. That much morphine was not cheap. Even with insurance it cost me about 8k. I slowly was paying it back, but the inevitable conflict of every day life expenses vs those made me bemoan my state to a friend. He worked for a clinic and told me that you can call up and say- hey, I owe X- can we settle for Y? You can do a payment plan too.

Good thing too, they might have repo'ed the foot!
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 8:12 PM on May 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


I can't think of a way to more exactly miss the point of this article than to wander into this thread preaching about affording necessities and saving money. That lifestyle holds no attraction to the author because she sees no point in trying to save up money. What is worth saving up for nowadays that is also achievable on a shoestring budget? Better to spend money on the comforting frivolities you can barely afford than try to save for something you can't afford anyway.

I'm not saying I condone this practice, but "Just be smart and save money!" is not a counter argument for "I don't see the point in spending wisely"
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:18 PM on May 21, 2017 [55 favorites]


I was sympathetic about how she spent her babysitting money and understanding about still trying to undo years of deprivation when she got her first real job. However, she lost me when I got to the part about "Still buying hardcover books with no discount, still daydreaming about what I’m going to spend my 401(k) on when I withdraw it early, because who are we kidding, I’m not trying to live to 65, are you nuts?"

I have less than no patience for avocado-toast type arguments, and I would dearly love to have some of the folks who condemn poor people for having a new phone or buying cigarettes or whatever try to lead their lives for a year or so, no end in sight, without small indulgences. But this woman is really exploring the upper limits of my sympathy. ~$15 cocktails and expensive handbags--that is well beyond "Allow not nature more than nature needs/Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s" territory, and well into "if you didn't dissipate that money, it could actually do you some good" land.

Having grown up relatively materially deprived myself, I do recognize the phenomenon, but it's a mental one, not (primarily) an economic one, and for a "35-year-old-ish" person not to have recognized and worked on addressing the problem is...not so great.
posted by praemunire at 8:34 PM on May 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


No, cutting back on avocado toast isn't going to help anything. You know what is going to help? Not using credit cards. Not driving expensive cars. Not eating out more than once or twice a week. Being very careful with spending on clothes, hobbies, and travel.

I guess we have different friends. All the millennials I know are driving low-end cars, go out maybe once a week (nothing fancy), and buy their clothes at Target or Goodwill. Among my six closest friends (ages 23-33), one has gone on a Real Vacation in the last two years (i.e. not car camping), and his dad paid for it. If they're buying luxury goods, they're sure not telling me about it. No one's poor, they're all in stable housing and eat well. But I don't know that any of them realistically expect to own a home. And the median home price here is below the national average.
posted by AFABulous at 8:55 PM on May 21, 2017 [25 favorites]


I hate the style of Dave Ramsey (too religious) and Mr. Money Mustache (too preachy and absolutist). But I think they have a lot of good stuff to say. As long as you're making an adequate non-spectacular salary (and you might not be), it's totally possible to afford necessities and still save money if you're careful and smart. It's just not easy, since there's so much out there to spend money on, and credit is so readily available.

I'm not familiar with Ramsey, but one of the things Mr. Money Mustache talks about at length is that cutting expenses is not enough, you also have to boost your income. Which just isn't going to happen for the majority of people without professional degrees. Further, he lucked out on landing an engineering job in a time and place where housing costs were reasonable*. That's not going to happen in a major city and rent eats up a huge amount of monthly budgets.

Barring a surprise Warren presidency, help isn't coming anytime soon. We just have to make the best of it and figure things out as well as we can.

If reducing the out of control levels of inequality in the US doesn't happen, things are only going to get worse. This problem cannot be solved by individual gumption or bootstraps or resolve. It is a systemic problem and without massive political reforms, we are fucked.

*MMM in fact mentioned that home prices have doubled over the past 4 years in his neighborhood when he posted his 2016 spending the other day
posted by indubitable at 9:03 PM on May 21, 2017 [13 favorites]


My joke for years was that retitrement plan is to spend carelessly, travel as much as I can now and live the sort of irresposonsibly hedonistic lifestyle that will definitely find me dropping dead of heart failure around seventy. Now that I'm over forty, I'm no longer sure that I mean this as a joke.
posted by thivaia at 9:34 PM on May 21, 2017 [21 favorites]


Oooh, a MeFi discussion about money/lifestyle/class! Let's run the checklist:

*sanctimony about how a writer of an essay handles their money? Check!
*sanctimony about those damn millennials, in a variety of flavors? Check!
*blithe advice about cutting out those expensive meals and fancy vacations that no one is actually eating or going on? check!

ugh.
posted by palomar at 9:54 PM on May 21, 2017 [39 favorites]


I haven't done this for a long while, I think I'm due a few comment responses.

Without that fundamental requirement, which is a starting point rather than a place to stop, you cannot avoid having homeless people out on the street.

There's lots of houses here. They're just priced out of the ability of most people to buy!

miyabo: No, cutting back on avocado toast isn't going to help anything. You know what is going to help? Not using credit cards. Not driving expensive cars. Not eating out more than once or twice a week. Being very careful with spending on clothes, hobbies, and travel.

In other words, all the things that avocado toast are used as a metaphor for? Have you listened to none of the above comments? I'm scraping by and I don't even HAVE a credit card. In fact, having a damn credit card might help take the sharp edges off of the jagged peaks of my income curve!

As long as you're making an adequate non-spectacular salary (and you might not be), it's totally possible to afford necessities and still save money if you're careful and smart.

That's just it, they're NOT making an adequate salary! Geez!

LuckyMonkey21: A little known fact about health care bills- you can negotiate them.

Another little known fact about health care bills -- even if you factored out the money that other nations pay for their citizen's health care, we would still pay much more than them. Prices for procedures, tests and medicine are much higher in the US than other places, because there, government has a lot of bargaining power to reduce costs. And here in the US, prices are high because, if someone doesn't pay and bargains their bills down, it raises costs for everyone else to take up the slack.

Good thing too, they might have repo'ed the foot!

DO NOT JOKE ABOUT THINGS LIKE THAT. To the wrong person in charge, that might look viable, and look who the President is.

Mr. Encyclopedia: I can't think of a way to more exactly miss the point of this article than to wander into this thread preaching about affording necessities and saving money.

THIS.

praemunire: But this woman is really exploring the upper limits of my sympathy. ~$15 cocktails and expensive handbags--that is well beyond "Allow not nature more than nature needs/Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s" territory, and well into "if you didn't dissipate that money, it could actually do you some good" land.

Careful there, you're basically saying something like (as a friend who has some loathsome views said recently) they should do away with welfare because people are living like kings on it, because (anecdotal evidence). Me? Even those people who do that, I don't blame them for a second, because they're definitely NOT living very high on the hog on welfare dollars, and when your entire life is spent in grinding poverty, I can definitely understand going a bit crazy when you catch sight of a hundred dollar bill.
posted by JHarris at 10:12 PM on May 21, 2017 [26 favorites]


I am lucky enough that I have never been poor. I have a low income, but it is enough that I can live a decent life as long as I am intensely frugal. I mean I will never be able to retire, most likely, but I should hopefully be able to get my kids to adulthood without them suffering too many hardships.

That being said, I remember reading a John Cheese article (can't find it now), where he said that being poor it was better to just spend any money you had because it was better to use the money now than to "save" it and just have the money disappear through whatever poor taxes your circumstances saw fit to punish you with.

So yeah, I totally understand this article and feel so depressed that we are at a place where I feel fortunate that I just might be able to make it through my life as long as literally nothing bad happens to me for the next twenty five years.
posted by Literaryhero at 11:34 PM on May 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


People thinking millenials can just bootstrap their way into a house, employment, education, and healthcare by skipping avocado toast are assholes. There are huge systemic problems with all four of these domains, and when you focus on the actions of individuals you're inadvertently (or frankly, deliberately) holding the wrong people accountable.
posted by supercrayon at 11:49 PM on May 21, 2017 [25 favorites]


I am thirty five years old and have never been on a vacation. Ever. Until quite recently I worked more or less non stop for twenty damn years, in a low paying job, because there was fuckall else going that worked with what my partner's studies were doing at any given time. I don't have a car. All my handbags are cheap pieces of shit. I've lived in rented shared housing, even now, with a four year old and another one on the way. We live according to the "rules" of what you should be doing when you're broke, and I can promise you it's not a magical recipe for success.

I'm lucky enough that my partner's salary is now enough I can stay home from work to raise our kids, but that's contingent on having a pair of lodgers, and frankly with the cost of child care being what it is I'd be more or less paying daycare for the privilege of working. So we plod along, carefully, and I generally manage the household as if it were the fucking Depression, and even then it's stressful and demeaning and boring.

There is this pressure to be *joylessly* poor. Never socialize - that means going out, because you can't entertain in a studio. Eat only gruel. Save every penny. Sit silent in the dark instead of paying for a Netflix subscription. If I'd saved 10% of my paycheck for every year of my employment I'd still be miles off having enough to do anything interesting with it, like retire or buy a house, and in the mean time I'm fucking miserable. Better to be broke and have eaten a nice brunch, or to be broke and to have had a fun night out with people who love you and value your company. Being broke and miserable stops seeming so good, so pure, when the odds are just stacked so far against you that you're going to need a miracle to stop being so damn poor all the time.

It's what it boils down to. The virtuous poor must be miserable. Conventional logic, followed appropriately, basically says that anyone trying to squeeze an ounce of living out of their lives is doing it wrong.

Fuck that.
posted by Jilder at 11:50 PM on May 21, 2017 [82 favorites]


Careful there, you're basically saying something like (as a friend who has some loathsome views said recently) they should do away with welfare because people are living like kings on it, because (anecdotal evidence). Me? Even those people who do that, I don't blame them for a second, because they're definitely NOT living very high on the hog on welfare dollars, and when your entire life is spent in grinding poverty, I can definitely understand going a bit crazy when you catch sight of a hundred dollar bill.

So, I guess you didn't read the part of my comment where I talked about the injustice of beating up on the poor for spending money on small pleasures? I am talking specifically about the specific adult behavior of this specific writer (who is not on welfare) that she describes herself. There is a large gap, even in places like NYC or LA, between "never spends a dime on frivolity" and "fancy cocktail lounges." She is chasing status and avoiding anxiety, not just looking for some respite from her daily toil. I actually find it fairly distasteful to equate her adult behavior as a writer who's sold more than one book and publishes articles in the NYT with that of the people she walks by on the same street who may be only precariously employed or not at all. She's a terrible "avocado toast" counterexample, because, yes, she could have perfectly nice drinks with her friend at her apartment and, though the savings might not buy her a house, they would definitely pay her light bill! I've certainly done my Mefi share of reacting to the title without reading the article, but...sometimes it helps to consider whether the facts merit the kneejerk ideological response?
posted by praemunire at 12:37 AM on May 22, 2017


I've had a few UK-housing versions of this discussion recently. Because house prices have been rising rapidly for the past couple of decades, home ownership rates are falling, more and more young people have given up on ever buying their own place. But the cultural message is still very much that you should strive to buy your own house, that's part of being an adult, that's what everyone wants to do. (And not unreasonably - the private rental sector is awful.) So why aren't they doing it? Well, you could look at the systematic issues at play - or you could decide that Young People Just Aren't Prepared To Scrimp And Save Like We Did, tut tut. ARGH.

Plenty of people are proud that they lived off as little as possible for a couple of years to save for a house deposit. There is a vague understanding that you'd probably need to do that for a bit longer now, but still a very poor level of understanding about what that would really mean for people. Living off baked beans on toast for a year to save for your house is one thing - it's a project, it's short term, the payoff is worth it. But doing that for twelve years is a whole different thing, especially when you'll likely get to the end of that twelve years to find you still don't have enough because house prices kept climbing. That's not saving - that's asceticism in service of someone else's worldview.

If I could go back in time to give my 18-year-old self advice, I wouldn't say "save more" or "be more financially responsible." I'd say "Be less financially responsible! Scrape together enough to get a mortgage on a flat in London, pay the minimum payments you can manage to wangle under whatever deal the banks will offer, and then just do whatever the hell you want for the next 20 years. You'll make more money from that than any amount of saving and budgeting and career planning would ever, ever have gained you."
posted by Catseye at 1:15 AM on May 22, 2017 [30 favorites]


I thought this was an interesting as well as entertaining piece. It's not clear to me that the writer necessarily lives 24/7 in the fashion she describes. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn't. I didn't see her asking for sympathy; in a way, I think this essay acts as a kind of public service in provoking the kind of discussion we're having. As Peach noted earlier: "You're not making enough money." Nope, I am not. It's inevitable that I will be priced out of the San Francisco Bay Area and probably sooner rather than later.

In tenuously related news, I spent nearly 50 bucks for a pampered hour in an airport lounge recently. I'd found 20 dollars on the sidewalk that morning and tossed in 30 of my own to treat myself well before a long flight. I'd never had avocado toast before and the lounge had a version with goat cheese and cubed, citrus-infused cucumber. It was so delicious I had two. Plus I met an entrepreneur at the lounge who I plan to pitch for work in the future. So I consider that money well spent, although I'm pretty sure many folks would consider it wasted.

(As an aside, I am always surprised when people think about saving in terms of percentages rather than specific amounts. A classic example is how someone might be willing to drive across town to save 10 bucks on buying groceries, say, but not to save 10 bucks on buying a computer. That's because our brains think that saving 10 bucks off of 100 bucks of groceries is a bigger deal than saving 10 bucks off of a 1000 dollar computer. But as far as our bank account is concerned, it's the same 10 bucks. Dollars are an absolute value. If 10 bucks are worth saving in the one case, they should be worth it in the other. But we tend to think of those situations as somehow different. I hope more learned folks here will know what this type of thinking is called.)
posted by Bella Donna at 1:26 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


By absolute value, I don't mean they are unaffected by inflation, etc. I just mean ten bucks is ten bucks, however you come up with it.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:29 AM on May 22, 2017


You'll make more money from that than any amount of saving and budgeting and career planning would ever, ever have gained you."

Too true. I've never been anything other than poor, but a well-timed small inheritance when I was in my early twenties meant I was able to nab a mortgage on a tiny two-up two-down terrace in the inner city. The time I've been in this house- slightly over a decade- rents in this postcode have gone from roughly £300 pcm to roughly £800pcm.

Frankly, having watched my parents scrimp and save, always on minimum wage, getting hit by terrible endowment policies, and still working now in their mid 70s, I'll take my chances and buy the odd cocktail whilst I still can.
posted by threetwentytwo at 2:17 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Reminder that "Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" is a phrase about an impossible task inspired by a notorious liar.
posted by ckape at 2:26 AM on May 22, 2017 [21 favorites]


That being said, I remember reading a John Cheese article (can't find it now), where he said that being poor it was better to just spend any money you had because it was better to use the money now than to "save" it and just have the money disappear through whatever poor taxes your circumstances saw fit to punish you with.

And when someone talks about how the poor lack bank accounts and how they use check cashing places remind yourself about how there is a fee from the bank for overdrafting an account and then how the tax authority has the power to obtain funds from a bank account that results in the account being taken to $0 and THEN a 'garnishment fee' be applied to the account.

No wonder any guy who comes along claiming he'll "fix" taxes is seen as a populist hero.

(and as for this 'light bill' "problem" - get yourself a USB recharger, rechargeable batteries and a headlamp. Wear the 1 Watt headlamp for your light and recharge at your office job! Other money saving tips: Do what the City says and disconnect your gutters from the sewage system and place the water in 500 gallon storage totes. Use that water in 5 gallon buckets to flush/bathe and pretend its like camping/you are on Victorian House. The City will replace your water meter 4 times in 3 years and send inspectors by because you are not using city water AND when your city places everyone's water usage online be shocked when 3 different neighbors ask how you have such low water usage. Eventually random people* will approach you about how the City made them disconnect their 2nd water heater because it was not a water heater but used for water storage and as a water heater is not approved for the use of water storage it is illegal to have it hooked up for storing water.)

* 1 person. But 2 years after the person mention it a city building inspector TOLD ya about the person, so word gets around.
posted by rough ashlar at 3:02 AM on May 22, 2017


Reading this post inspired me to get up and turn lights off.
posted by freethefeet at 3:58 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I never understood the idea that a netflix subscription and an internet connection were a luxury item. I bet they are the most efficient entertainment and also utility money that people can spend. Netflix is what $10 a month? The internet connection is $40? so for a measly $50 a month you can either take the family out to see one movie, or you can watch a movie whenever you want. Not to mention all of the other incredible useful things you can do on the internet, like interact with the governmental services that you should be getting if you're economically disadvantaged, or research and apply for jobs, or do free online courses to build up employable skills. What really needs to happen is there to be a big push to ensure that everyone has access to a decent speed internet connection. It should be regulated and controlled like a utility, like electricity and water. It should be a minor emergency when you aren't able to be connected and service providers should treat it like your electricity or water failing and not like an inconvenience where they'll be by to fix it sometime in the next week.
posted by koolkat at 4:15 AM on May 22, 2017 [17 favorites]


It should be a minor emergency when you aren't able to be connected

It should be. Net goes out and you need a phone and the minutes to answer automated marketing questions and stay on hold for 30. Call fails and then you gotta get a ride to get a card for your phone and try again. What should be is not.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 4:55 AM on May 22, 2017


EmpressCallipygos makes a great point on how social dynamics and well-being are never considered in those "This Millennial Software Engineer Lived In a Shed in Solitude for 10 Years So They Could SAVE and Buy a Four-Bedroom" puff pieces that come out every other month. I am really fortunate in the sense that I am one of the folks she mentions who can *choose* to be thrifty and then pat myself on the back for it, but I'm not being forced to do it. I'm healthy. I don't have debt. I have emergency savings, and then some. I do not however see any clear path to buying a house, or retiring before I am 90.

I had friends in town last weekend, and the only times I was able to see them was for dinner or brunch. These things cost money. What am I supposed to do, tell them I can't hang because I'm trying to be responsible and saving for fucking real estate for the next 20 years? Go to the restaurant but not order anything, then go home and make pasta with butter? There are 47 year-olds out there frothing at the mouth who genuinely think "yes, yes he should be doing that". I should be forgoing all material or social enjoyment and sacrificing it at the altar of Maybe Buying A House One Day, or a Diverse Stock Portfolio...or something.

This #FrugalLife shit is fine and dandy if you're a shut-in or a homebody or proud introvert or you're one of those couples that is content to stay in every night while your friends wonder where the hell you've been for the past six months. But not every group activity can be board games night or a thrifty picnic at the park. Your friends are going to want to go to the movies or to a restaurant sometimes. The idea that avocado smashed on toast is considered some indulgent luxury is absurdity. The idea that you're supposed to say Just Say No to spending time with your friends 90% of the time is absurdity. Hoarding every penny by forcing yourself to be antisocial against your will is not a way to live.
posted by windbox at 5:15 AM on May 22, 2017 [18 favorites]


You know what is going to help? Not using credit cards. Not driving expensive cars. Not eating out more than once or twice a week. Being very careful with spending on clothes, hobbies, and travel.

I don't have a credit card. I have a low-end car, because I can't afford to live in an area with decent public transport. When I eat out, it's usually because I'm too busy to cook, and I deliberately choose quantity-over-quality places so I can stretch the food for more than one meal. I shop for clothes about once a year, usually to replace items that have worn out - and my first stop is H&M or Target. I don't have any expensive hobbies.

But you're right about the travel. I did kind of go on a vacation, once.

I spent a few hundred dollars on a plane ticket to visit a friend in Sacramento. I've always wanted to travel - but never had money and time off at the same time. But I was able to afford Sacramento because I wouldn't have to pay for a hotel (and I wanted to see my friend, too). I even rented a car so that we could see things outside of Sacramento, since hers was too unreliable.

That was really frivolous. I should have saved that money. It would have really helped.

(Oh, hey - it's been a few years since this vacation, and my friend just now found a fulltime job better than the two part-time jobs she currently has. She might be able to afford to move out of her parents' house now. Probably not enough to replace the car, though.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:19 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


I actually find it fairly distasteful to equate her adult behavior as a writer who's sold more than one book and publishes articles in the NYT with that of the people she walks by on the same street who may be only precariously employed or not at all.

Okay, I'm genuinely curious. How much do you suppose the NYT pays per opinion piece? How much, in your imagination, does an average writer make off publishing a book? How stable do you think that money is? You have no idea, right?
posted by milk white peacock at 5:49 AM on May 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


Oh my... Yeah, money woes are very real in my generation.

My friend, who literally works 7 days a week between his massage therapy job and Lyft, is going to live out of his truck for a year to save money and pay off said truck.

Another friend who has no job skills developed severe mental health stuff from not having enough and having to rely on her abusive mom. We can't talk anymore because of said stuff. (This story has played out more than once in my life)

Me? I work party time and pay 3x as much as my peers for food because of my food sensitivities. I bike everywhere. Somehow, with my frivolous spending being craft items, I have zero money in savings. Funny that.

The systemic issues are very real. With the jobs that will be automated in the next 5 years, this is only going to get much worse unless we fix this in 2018-2020.
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 5:49 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


windbox, As someone whose friends are all 47 year old please remember that basically anyone of ANY generation who did not buy their first real estate living in major developed cities in Canada, Australia, the UK or the US in the early 2000s is in the exact same predicament as you.

I'm tired of this being viewed as a Millennial thing. All my friends are in their late 40s, the only ones who have managed to get a mortgage had help from the bank of mum and dad or somehow managed to get it together to buy pre-boom. And we are all degree educated, working in professional jobs etc. Most of us don't have children, couldn't afford that either.
posted by wingless_angel at 5:59 AM on May 22, 2017 [12 favorites]


Another thing that really shocked me when I was looking into places for a friend to rent in the city I live in was just how much the prices have gone up in the three years since we bought our house. We used to live in a one bed flat for £500 a month close to the university (one mile walk). Now you'd be lucky to find the same apartment for £600, while our mortgage payment has theoretically gone down from £550 to £450 due to falling interest rates, our combined over-payments, and going through the bands of equity to get a better interest rate. As it is now I think we will pay off the mortgage within 10 years, but without the initial deposit we would have been stuck with ever increasing rents acting like a stick that is holding the carrot just out of the donkeys reach, but it keeps on trying to get it. Who knows what will be necessary to have a downpayment on a house in 5 years, when we went in to renegotiate another fixed term interest rate they added £40k to the value of the house without blinking an eye or asking for any justification. In essence having the house means that there are essentially three earners, myself, my wife and the house. I hesitate to think what it would be values at now that we have done improvements. It wouldn't surprise me that nearly every £ spent on the house has generated £5 in value because we are handy and able to do things ourselves to a high standard.
posted by koolkat at 6:04 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Another Londoner here. I work for local government, and we were offered first bid on new homes being built around the borough. For a 25% ownership, you had to have a minimum household income of £70k a year. My job caps at £25k, my supervisors at £28k, and our managers at £35k. Essentially the only people who could afford these homes we were so generously offered are our bosses' bosses.
posted by toerinishuman at 6:15 AM on May 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


The person whinging on about how gross this writer's behavior is... do you know who Sam Irby is? Have you read previous work of hers posted here, about the poverty she lived in as a child and as an adult, about the serious health issues that keep her poor? Do you know anything about her at all? From your characterization of her, it seems unlikely.
posted by palomar at 6:31 AM on May 22, 2017 [18 favorites]


As someone whose friends are all 47 year old please remember that basically anyone of ANY generation who did not buy their first real estate living in major developed cities in Canada, Australia, the UK or the US in the early 2000s is in the exact same predicament as you.

I "own" (as in, have a mortgage on) a house in a secondary, inland city. It was possible because of luck and decent-but-not-outrageous salaries, combined with a more normal housing market where there is a relationship between a middle class salary and house prices. There is no way that we could possibly consider buying a place in a city like London, LA, or NYC, or even in some places in the next rung down. Our savings, such as they are, and the equity from a house in a much lower market, simply don't even approach what would be required. It's an odd feeling to be not-poor, and yet also completely priced out of major markets -- it's a change that has happened completely within my adult life, without my being in a position to benefit from it. For someone in a more precarious position, the gap between their situation and things like homeownership is immense.

That said, I certainly know people who make decent to very good salaries, and still put themselves deep in the red with frivolous spending. Societally, housing/education/health care are the bigger factors, but individual people certainly demonstrate whatever stereotype you are looking for, including spending their way into insurmountable debt.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:39 AM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


If I could go back in time to give my 18-year-old self advice, I wouldn't say "save more" or "be more financially responsible." I'd say "Be less financially responsible! Scrape together enough to get a mortgage on a flat in London, pay the minimum payments you can manage to wangle under whatever deal the banks will offer, and then just do whatever the hell you want for the next 20 years."

Catseye has it. Except it would have been even better if my artist parents had moved to NYC in the 70s and bought something, ANYTHING.

I scraped and saved and bought a cheap house in Ohio when I was 22 and then made the ultimate mistake of selling it to follow my then-boyfriend to Boston. Oh, to have a $650 mortgage again! I was an idiot.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 6:51 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I feel like I occupy a weird state where I will always be too low income to fit in with the middle class but having family who can help with the difficulties of earning below a thousand a month for what could be the rest of my life make me unable to relate to my peers dealing with the same jobs and health issues who don't have said family. I don't fit into the suburban neighborhood I just moved into because I haven't earned my way here and I am one of those embarrassing non-adults who moved in with family, swallow my pride (who am I kidding I don't even have that any more), but we have food now, and we don't have to try to survive buying groceries and necessities for two on 20 dollars a week.

My son doesn't ask to play arcade games with me because I've never bought him things like that but the other day I had four dollars left in my pocket and I thought, why not.... so I tell him "You want to play the game?" He says "No it's ok I don't have to."

I say no really, I have the money, you can play it, do you want to? "Yeah, but it's ok." I tell him go for it if you want to, you really can! He says Really? And so we blow through three of my four dollars and it's honestly... really really fun. I feel like a really cool mom taking him out somewhere to do something other than the park which is the only thing I can usually afford. Before it sounds like a sob story-- because of family, he gets very good birthday and Christmas presents and if I can present the case for an enrichment activity they have helped with such things before, things that would not happen if it weren't for them.

This is another reason I cringe when people talk about no-gift or only book giving holiday traditions-- that would pretty munch nix the opportunity for what can be essentially charity between family members or friends to feel a little more fun and a little less soul grinding. It's an opportunity to ask for things. And often we would get toilet paper and dish soap for presents and it would be the only time I would have some of those items in stock. For a while I learned to clean the house with toilet paper when out of paper towels, to exist without conditioner and use dish soap for shampoo if needed (sometimes I would get dr. bronners so I could use it for everything). I still don't buy conditioner even when I can afford it and I'm used to my hear just being frizzy and I don't care, I would rather by water color paints and get to do painting with my son sometimes... or.... let him play an arcade games a few times a year.

I don't have credit cards or even debit- I use cash only and I usually would only go in to cash a check but recently end of school keeps bringing up new things, and I've gone in a few times a week the past two weeks. A woman working there made this face when I came up, it could be she doesn't like her job or it's just how she looks at everyone or or or, but it was the first time I felt really ashamed that I have to come into the back when I realize I need more money because I don't earn enough to justify having a debit card and I'm trying to keep myself from spending and make it as hard as possible. If I take out twenty and realize I need another twenty I have to go back. I always put the most expensive items at the end of the groceries on the conveyor belt so if I added it up wrong (often since I struggle with math accuracy) I can put something back. I'm usually not even embarrassed about this, usually my sense of shame is so exhausted that I can't even notice anymore. Just occasionally it creeps back. For now I'm so happy we have food to eat and housing stability with family I don't the awkward looks from the neighbors I just meet "Yeah I moved in here with my parents, nice to meet you!"

It's great. I know I'm not considered a real adult and it stings when I hear people make jokes about someone "living in their parents basement" and how embarrassing and incompetent people who can't make it on their own are and oh the dating advice about avoiding people who have disabilities or live with family... it stings. I have given up dating for the last 6 years and though I wish I could get married and maybe even have a child with someone who wouldn't leave me I know I'm not going to qualify as "self sufficient" enough to date in time that I could have kids. I can hope maybe I could find another inadequate non-adult to date, maybe our combined incomes would be enough to justify creating a child in poverty, I don't know. As someone whose primary skills and nature are in childcare I don't foresee myself ever really "making it".

And it leaves me dreaming of finding a financially stable (i.e. more than 20,000 a year?) dude who is cool with have a financial failure of a partner. Makes me think I need to find some conservative guy who might even see that as a plus because I'm not good enough for a progressive guy.
posted by xarnop at 7:04 AM on May 22, 2017 [10 favorites]


None of the millenials I know even have cars. To the extent that they occasionally splurge on a night out, it's supported by a side hustle - pet-sitting, freelance writing, babysitting, whatever they can pull together on top of their day jobs. They all have roommates and none of them have designer bags or anything resembling that. I'm a Gen-Xer and have nothing but sympathy for the ridiculous student loan debt and other challenges the generation behind me faces.

As it is, I blew my one chance at homeownership - bought a house with my then-husband in a neighborhood that has no chance of appreciation and led to a miserable commute for me, because it was closer to his job. So when we divorced and he moved out, my only option was to sell. I was lucky to get enough to pay off the mortgage but had to cover closing costs myself, to say nothing of getting back the value of all the improvements we put into the place. That was it, my one stupid chance to get out of this cycle of never-ending rent increases, and I blew it by not insisting on considering more than just "easy commute for the husband" as the deciding factor for location.

My daydreams now don't even involve owning a home here in Chicago because that feels so far out of reach. [Now, I should be clear, there are plenty of neighborhoods in Chicago where I could afford a home, but they have issues of poor transit accessibility or no nearby services (grocery, restaurants, etc) or the crime that comes from segregation and poverty and neglect. But if I wanted to live in a not-great neighborhood and have a 1hr15min commute I could have kept the old house. Perhaps it is a luxury, but I want to live in a neighborhood where I can walk to a store or a restaurant or a bar and can get to my job in a reasonable amount of time.] So now my daydreams involve moving back to Buffalo, where housing is much more affordable; but of course the problem is finding a job there. My job search alerts from LinkedIn have about a 100:1 Chicago:Buffalo ratio.

There's a real struggle with finding the balance between frugality and self-care. What's the point of being miserable now if your rate of saving for a down payment could never keep up with the cost of housing? You might as well just accept being a renter forever and plan your life around that. I'll have paid off my credit card debt from the divorce and selling the house by the end of this year, and I'm lucky to make a good living and have a solid 401K. But my computer is 6 years old and my phone is 3 years old and my car is 13 years old and in the last month I've spent $900 on car repairs and $1000 on veterinary expenses for my 10 1/2 year old dog and it just feels like you can never, ever get ahead.

I use YNAB and it has helped me so much to have a budget, but sometimes the constant access to being able to track my progress, especially with my tendency to see everything as morally "good" or "bad" with little room in between, simply arms me with the fuel to constantly beat myself up about not being good enough.
posted by misskaz at 7:40 AM on May 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


And I'm a bit embarrassed to have shared my bad non-feminist day dream of financial stability through man. I am pretty determined if I do, to marry someone in a similar economic situation so I can be sure I love them for who they really are and all that idealist crap instead of out of financial desperation but I also sort of think all that advice about true love doesn't match with thousands of years of marriage being an issue of survival, practicality and improving living circumstances. The realist in me doesn't care about "true love". I have compassion for all human beings, there will be real love because I love humanity itself-- but I think the romantic notions of true love make sense to worry about when you have enough food in your belly for such things to be relevant.

Though, truly, I can only ruminate on such things given I have been free of dangerous men for a long while (and men in my income bracket I do think tend to come more often in this variety sometimes not even their fault). I am aware that if it were a man I were living with I could be a stay at home or part time working mom and I could pass as acceptable as a human being, so that's part of the dream. I suppose I prefer it this way, my parents are nice enough and non-violent and non-aggressive. This is good. I feel very fortunate-- but not blessed-- if the gods have any power they should be focusing it on saving those affected by war and famine and disease. (Though if I have any friends who have helped me out from the beyond, my thanks is always there). I could even afford conditioner if I wanted it. And I can live off my tax return and take off for the summer instead of working just to pay for childcare and end up earning 400 dollars at the end of the month and still not be able to pay bills. Maybe my back and nerves could even heal up. So it's good, really good. Good enough I can be sad about not having a partner, something I didn't think as much about during the years mostly running from danger and trying to find food. That means things have got to be pretty good right now. I feel really bad for my friends in similar circumstance without family who can help. The fact that I get this reprieve from the grind of torment that is daily life for too many low income people is a sanctuary too few have.

I am hopeful we can change this.
posted by xarnop at 8:00 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


[Sorry] And to dive more into this I think it really gets down to all these competing values of "good." Completely putting aside brand-name consumerism and those kinds of materialistic desires, the following things are all considered things a person "should" do for various reasons (search on AskMe and you'll find each and every one of these items as answers to questions):

- Be frugal
- Save for retirement
- Buy a house with no less than 20% down
- If you have debt of any kind, pay it off as quickly as possible; interest rates are for suckers
- Eat fresh, nourishing, healthy foods, cooked at home
- Buy organic vegetables and humanely raised meat, poultry, and dairy
- Dress in a way that is professionally appropriate and flattering
- Avoid fast fashion and sweatshop-made clothing; invest in classic, timeless pieces
- Stay in shape by exercising; oh and you really ought to do strength training so have a gym membership or buy and make the space for equipment at home
- Go to the doctor for regular checkups and monitoring
- Go to the dentist and have good teeth
- Be well-read
- Get a good night's sleep every night
- Maintain your relationship with your partner, if you have one, with regular date nights etc.
- Maintain your friendships by seeing your friends in person regularly, because social media is not enough
- Maintain your relationship with family which may include travelling to see them, gifts for holidays, preparing to care for your parents as they age
- Shop locally; support small businesses and avoid Amazon, Walmart, etc.

Everything on this list has a value - personal economics, health, environment, politics, improving your community both large-scale and small. And this doesn't even get into all the ways we shame people who are parents which would be a whole separate list!

I feel like I fail at 90% of these most of the time, and frankly I can't blame people who fail at things that I achieve, because no one can do all of this. People who prioritize, say, friendships, organic foods, and supporting small businesses rather than the buying a house or saving for retirement aren't really doing anything wrong.
posted by misskaz at 8:11 AM on May 22, 2017 [26 favorites]


Completely putting aside brand-name consumerism and those kinds of materialistic desires, the following things are all considered things a person "should" do for various reasons

Tons of these things turn out to be half-assed workarounds for the failings of capitalism. Just off the top of my head:
Save for retirement
Because pensions have virtually disappeared and Social Security is often barely adequate to get by on in old age.
Buy a house with no less than 20% down
Because we can't have nice public housing because (a) we would have to tax rich people to pay for it and (b) landlords everywhere would not appreciate the competition. A socialist might even point out that the problem is that private property exists.
Go to the doctor for regular checkups and monitoring
Go to the dentist and have good teeth
Because despite being one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, we cannot put that toward providing health care for all. Massive inequality means the people with all the money are the people with all the power are the people who own the media are the people who are taken seriously by lawmakers, and lawmakers aren't about to cross them.
Avoid fast fashion and sweatshop-made clothing; invest in classic, timeless pieces
Shop locally; support small businesses and avoid Amazon, Walmart, etc.
Because labor standards fought for in the 19th and 20th century have largely evaporated and labor unions are in a long, slow decline. And if there are labor standards that get in the way, just ship production overseas where standards are just this side of slavery and you can hire the army to murder all the union organizers that you want. So we dump responsibility for fair labor standards on the individual consumer to investigate, to feel guilty about, someone who is less likely to organize into a force to be reckoned with, especially when they're too busy themselves:
Stay in shape by exercising; oh and you really ought to do strength training so have a gym membership or buy and make the space for equipment at home
Be well-read
Get a good night's sleep every night
Maintain your relationship with your partner, if you have one, with regular date nights etc.
Maintain your friendships by seeing your friends in person regularly, because social media is not enough
Maintain your relationship with family which may include travelling to see them, gifts for holidays, preparing to care for your parents as they age
Because the productivity gains of the past 40 years have exclusively accumulated to the tiny group of people who own almost everything. They're stealing even more of the fruits of our labor when we could be making a living on 24 hours a week of work or less. So instead of taking the above items as natural things that we do in the course of living, we have to block out time for them on our ever busier schedules.
posted by indubitable at 9:29 AM on May 22, 2017 [17 favorites]


I think it is important to remember that the very title of this piece is key— the idea that you would only have one emergency a year, or one catastrophic draining of your savings every couple of years, is no longer reliable. As all of us become less financially stable, we all become less able to help one another when a crisis hits, but we simultaneously know more people who are being hit with a new crisis on a more regular basis. A cracked tooth can destroy all of your progress. Hitting a piece of metal on the highway can screw up your car AND your job AND your childcare situation fifteen miles from home AND your second income if you are working for Lyft at night. Getting diagnosed with one thing, by accident, can destroy your solvency for life.

For a huge number of people, there are no future catastrophes to prepare for, just a neverending round of present catastrophes. If there is a 75% chance that your car will get repo’ed anyway, go ahead and have a drink. Give yourself 45 minutes to not worry about it and support a friend who is going through other terrible things. If my brother breaks his foot tomorrow, am I going to have to help out to make sure he can pay his rent? Will that be the money I’ve been saving up to repair my brakes? If so, a panini for lunch instead of ramen on a stressful day at work isn’t going to be what makes or breaks me. People like to invoke the marshmallow example (toddlers who can delay gratification in anticipation of two marshmallows later instead of one marshmallow now) as if it is a constant, but for a lot of people, the difference isn’t between one marshmallow now and two later. It is one now or zero later.

Also, I think the hardcover book illustration is an interesting one— I’m a lover of used books, but in the new gig economy, being able to write a witty think piece about a new release (book, movie, Showtime prestige show) as soon as it comes out is a viable source of income. If you wait ten months to read it because that is how long the waiting list is at the public library, you have lost your shot to “join the conversation” and “build your brand”. Publications have a roster of people who they can ask for an article at the last second, and being able to consume the media they want covered is a cost of the job, not just an act of personal pleasure. The gig economy raconteur has to first consume the product that publications want someone to raconter about, and publishers are less and less likely to distribute materials for review to anyone except the most well-known, full-time critics.

Even our hobbies have turned into just another way to try to pay the rent.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 9:54 AM on May 22, 2017 [14 favorites]


There are certainly individuals who are broke because they spend their money foolishly. And there are people who welcome the structure and guidance offered by strict budgets and frugality experts.

But I see "be more frugal! Don't buy so many lattes!" offered up as a financial panacea for big ticket items such as housing and international travel. Don't buy so many lattes, then you can afford to buy a house. Don't buy so much avocado toast - cook at home instead! - and you will be able to afford that international trip that will gain you so much social capital. But it's not that simple, as Elizabeth Warren has been saying for thirteen years now. Note that the Warren interview was from before the Great Recession! The economy was supposedly flush then. After the Great Recession, things only got worse. And here we are. I hate generational labels, but people who were lucky enough to get into the housing market - when being frugal was enough to net one a down payment - are often not very understanding of how things have changed. This is what all those "Old Economy Steve" memes are about. Middle-aged GenX folks who need to get back into the housing market or who need to buy their own health care are just as screwed as the Millennials.

One thing that grinds my gears and burns my britches about the whole frugality schtick is that it's anti-feminist and anti-child in many of its manifestations. "Frivolous" purchases that should be done without are coded female - clothing, shoes, specialty food items, even lattes ("Uggs and Pumpkin Spice Lattes, EW THEY SUCK!" is a horrible sexist meme). Many sellers of the frugal lifestyle say that Americans Spoil Their Children and that things like music lessons are a "frill" - just buy them secondhand bikes and tell them to join the military if they want to go to college! They're the same ones who crap on the humanities (guess what gender those are coded?) and lionize the trades (and guess what gender THOSE are coded?).

Big Frugality - as I will call it to distinguish it from simply having a personal budget - is the idea of the deserving vs. the undeserving poor packaged with a bootstrappy label and adorned with curlicues of sexism. Again, to quote Elizabeth Warren: Americans are not going broke over lattes!
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 9:59 AM on May 22, 2017 [19 favorites]


I am reminded of the many years I spent teaching the children or grandchildren of the wealthy. Many, many of them were more leveraged than your would think, carrying way more debt than they could handle. When the stock market went down the air of panic was palpable. They were mostly terrified. It is remarkably easy to spend enough to bankrupt even the wealthy if they really buy into conspicuous consumption.

Much of the nonsensical advice aimed at poor people comes from people who know they are spending more than they can handle themselves, and who are just extrapolating.
posted by Peach at 11:09 AM on May 22, 2017 [13 favorites]


Much of the nonsensical advice aimed at poor people comes from people who know they are spending more than they can handle themselves, and who are just extrapolating.

*ding ding ding* Peach nails it!!
posted by Melismata at 11:20 AM on May 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


this pressure to be *joylessly* poor.

Oh god, that. A lot of people seem to have this expectation that people being poor should be engaging in some kind of performative Dickensian poverty because poor people now are just foolish and not, you know, REALLY poor like poor people used to be. This is often coupled with how frivolous they are for having FLAT SCREEN TELEVISIONS or MICROWAVE OVENS. (Fuck off - any appliance I can buy in a CVS pharmacy is *not* luxurious.) How dare they DO THINGS THAT ARE FUN. And obviously, people should just be able to transition from abject at-risk-of-living-in-a-box poverty to comfortable middle class in one jump. I hear it happens the week after you give up avocado toast and lattes.

Also, anyone who boasts about their way of life being voluntarily simply or voluntarily frugal in a way that lets them feel morally superior but also make sure you know they're not just *poor* can go fuck themselves. I have encountered this a few times and it's just infuriating.
posted by rmd1023 at 12:41 PM on May 22, 2017 [14 favorites]


I see a lot of you judging Irby as some flighty socialite buying cocktails every weekend, but as a regular fan of her blog I can tell you an average of one out of every one of her blog posts is about being at home and broke and miserable, and going out is the worst idea that could occur to the human mind, and the only good thing about moving to a shitty suburb is having fewer people around. She posts a regular book club that's entirely premised around never meeting or interacting with any other living breathing human, with posts like "bitches gotta read: one day we'll be dead and none of this will matter" and rules like "we are never going to discuss this, ever. i mean seriously. i'm going to derive pleasure from knowing that people i might possibly enjoy spending time with if i ever could bring myself to meet new people and i are falling asleep and drooling on the same book we'll probably never finish. maybe we'll talk about it on twitter or something. but even thinking about organizing that is a daunting task and i'm already exhausted." I see her talk about going out and enjoying herself with a cocktail for once and I think, thank god, thank all gods, she's a little happier and better adjusted than she likes to let on and she can smile and experience regular human joy for one goddamn evening even if it costs thousands of man hours in Serious Adult Stares and Headshakes.

I have a STEM degree because people told me that's the only way you can make a middle class lifestyle these days. I have a very, very long empty patch on my resume where I applied to well over a thousand jobs. I spent what is at my current pay more than a month's salary on a full blown VR setup because I will, at current rate, never ever match my income to the cost of loans + rent in my area + car + food +++++. I live in a garbage hole without paying because a relative got a mortgage in the long-ago when mortgage was less than double what a full time job pays but when I put that three months of rent that I saved up for four months to afford onto my face I am the main character of every book I put down in the early 2000s for being too pessimistic, I am Hiro Protagonist, and I can at least control one fucking thing without paying twenty dollars every time I stretch my arm out, only the first time. I paid all the money I had left for a car repair and that only covered the first half of it, and I lost eighteen dollars by being late to my shift the day I spent five hours getting my car repaired, and I think my transmission might be busted now. My car is finally quiet enough that I can hear the breaking noises every time I hit any sort of bump. My hands hurt every day.
posted by fomhar at 12:09 AM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


then go home and make pasta with butter?

This aspect is also an issue - the cheap carbs of Nixon/Earl Buts. The Navajo reservation system seems to be the simplest way to track income VS health outcomes. And by simple the words used by Partners in health is "worst outcome" and "every other person is diabetic"

With the jobs that will be automated in the next 5 years, this is only going to get much worse unless we fix this in 2018-2020.

While automation sure does seem to be the outcome - what is the fix? Ban automation and bring back carbon paper along with typing pools? Consumers don't WANT the high prices and variability of a non-automated world. Consumers seem to really LIKE the cheapness of hand-held networked electronics and how does this fit into a "fix"?

You have people who think in less than 10 years petro-cars will be gone and non-self driving cars will be banned. No where is the electrical power distribution needed for that brave new world addressed, nor the generation of that electrical power. Nor the mining of battery material or even the "national security" needs of having oil refining/production capacity. Lets say the fix is PV - fine. Is every business gonna have to put in enough PV to charge these cars? Is every home gonna have to have enough land for PV to charge batteries then discharged to charge the car at night?

As long as we are looking to "fix" things, for the long term, what's the plan on addressing the end of economically minable Phosphorous in 100ish years? Night soil? Hope for space mining to be a thing and drop refined P from space back to Earth? What's gonna power these mining rigs if the above linked person is right and there is little oil being pumped? The 100 year problem will need something still working in 100 years......what's that gonna be?
posted by rough ashlar at 4:22 AM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


You know what is going to help? Not using credit cards. Not driving expensive cars. Not eating out more than once or twice a week. Being very careful with spending on clothes, hobbies, and travel.

You know what else is going to help? A functioning economy that moves away from funneling all available cash and assets to the top 1% of the 1% and that legislates accordingly. I am so sick of this "if you economize appropriately and spend less, all the rich people and fat cats will smile down from their mountains of gold and give you a few milkbones and pats on the head" bullshit.
posted by blucevalo at 6:20 AM on May 23, 2017 [12 favorites]


You know what is going to help? Not using credit cards. Not driving expensive cars. Not eating out more than once or twice a week. Being very careful with spending on clothes, hobbies, and travel.

We have no credit cards. We don't own a car at all, expensive or not. We eat out once or twice a year. We spend very little on clothing, my only hobby makes money, and we have been on one four day vacation in 12 years that did not involve traveling to see my mother.

These are not choices.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:53 AM on May 23, 2017 [7 favorites]


I like this piece and I think Samantha Irby is a terrific writer.
posted by latkes at 8:52 AM on May 23, 2017


You know what is going to help? Not using credit cards. Not driving expensive cars. Not eating out more than once or twice a week. Being very careful with spending on clothes, hobbies, and travel.

And for those of us who don't own a car, only shop for clothes at Goodwill, and never eat out at all, what's going to help us?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:16 AM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


The median rent in the town I grew up in is more than my gross monthly pay. But sure, it's the avocado toast, lattes, and other frivolous luxuries that are keeping me from homeownership.
posted by Lexica at 10:33 AM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


The number of people who tell me to never use a credit card is about equal to the number who say I must use a credit card so I have a good credit score instead of nothing. Common sense advice is equally balanced by plausible sounding nonsense for just about every young person. Now that "go to college" is defunct as an automatic ticket to success and "go to college but only in science or engineering" is getting more and more holes, the advice I hear people giving the teenagers in my life is "study programming." I've tried and tried, I justified my new computer to myself because my old one was so old I couldn't run programming tools like a 64 bit virtual machine properly, but I hate it, I hate coding so much and like many millions of other young americans I'll never be good at it and the last supposed 'sure thing' life path is closed to me.

The only way we'll find a way out of this is if we can get more than half of the population to admit that poor people have a right to exist and have food and housing- maybe the end of trucking will be a wide enough wake up call, or maybe it'll be the rapidly growing realization that there is no guaranteed path to upper middle class anymore, and there is no more sure success besides birthright nobility. Every big change in society seems to come a hundred times slower than anybody involved expects and many times faster than everyone else combined has a chance to react to and my best chance at this point is to try to be one of the people working on a big change in society so I can catch one of these passing waves. I march, I talk, I call my senator, but it's not changing fast enough so I fail another online learning course and get drunk while I write long comments and play videogames where I'm a space captain. Thank god videogames are still good, at least.
posted by fomhar at 12:45 AM on May 24, 2017 [8 favorites]


If you are seriously having trouble figuring out what to do with your life, the BLS keeps detailed statistics on what jobs are in demand and which are likely to be underfilled in the future.

Were I in that position, I'd do accounting, preferably audit. If the numbers make you want to claw your eyes out, there are IT audit jobs that pay extremely well if you can get an undergrad major in accounting and have/can develop a strong background in databases, security, or anything like that. The downside is that you will spend very little time at home in a job like that.
posted by wierdo at 5:27 PM on May 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm sure that's sound advice and well intended, but surely the entire millennial generation can't get jobs in IT auditing? I think society needs a better solution.
posted by latkes at 6:06 PM on May 24, 2017 [8 favorites]


Obviously not, hence the preceding advice to look at BLS data to get a feel for which jobs will be in demand and which won't. That said, I do completely agree that there are serious structural issues that guarantee that even doing that does not ensure that a particular person won't graduate into a job market where it is impossible to find employment in their chosen field. Automation all but ensures a continuing decline in employment pretty much across the board.

The fact of the matter is that there simply isn't enough work to be done on an ongoing basis for the economy to achieve full employment at all times. Yes, it will continue to happen at the peak of the business cycle, but as soon as things cool off there will be yet another round of automation that will eliminate yet more jobs. As long as we tie individual worth to employment this is a problem that will continue to plague us.

Sadly, there will never be enough jobs fixing the automation or even developing it to offset the losses to automation, and even if there were, not everyone is cut out for it, just as not everyone is cut out to be a programmer or an accountant or anything else.

Unfortunately, thanks to globalization, wages for low skilled work that hasn't yet been automated will continue to fall behind pretty much no matter what we do, which is why the problem is so intractable without screwing over either ourselves or the global poor that have been some of the greatest beneficiaries of increased trade. This is why a universal basic income or guaranteed employment are becoming increasingly necessary. Unfortunately, our puritan work ethic stands firmly in opposition to the only possible solutions to the automation trap.
posted by wierdo at 10:46 AM on May 25, 2017


Unfortunately, thanks to globalization, wages for low skilled work that hasn't yet been automated will continue to fall behind pretty much no matter what we do, which is why the problem is so intractable without screwing over either ourselves or the global poor that have been some of the greatest beneficiaries of increased trade. This is why a universal basic income or guaranteed employment are becoming increasingly necessary.

If you acknowledge that this is so, then why did you opine about the need for people to review BLS data and see where they could be employed? That comes across as yet another bootstrappy comment - which I suspect may not have been your intent, but it was indeed how it came across...
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:51 AM on May 25, 2017


I mention it because while it can't help everyone, having the data to make the most of the hand we're being dealt can in fact improve outcomes on the individual level despite the situation in the aggregate being untenable. It never hurts to be prepared to jump on any opportunity that may present itself. For the moment, individuals can still have decent outcomes even as society as a whole gets worse off.

Granted, many people are prevented by their situation from providing themselves with the tools that enable success in this shit situation, but that doesn't mean that those who can shouldn't.

Bootstrap arguments are shit because they fail to acknowledge the role that luck and social factors play in success. However, saying there is literally nothing anyone can do at the individual level to help themselves in the short term is also total shit, despite it being true for some. In the long term, we are all fucked if we aren't the ones that own the machines, but we'll all be dead in the long term too, so that isn't a great reason not to do what you can while you still can.

In short, while society as a whole is screwed without structural reforms, it will remain possible for some people to make a decent enough living in some classes of jobs for the next decade or two, so it's a bit defeatist to ignore that there are actions one can take to help delay that outcome at the individual level.
posted by wierdo at 12:18 PM on May 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


In short, while society as a whole is screwed without structural reforms, it will remain possible for some people to make a decent enough living in some classes of jobs for the next decade or two, so it's a bit defeatist to ignore that there are actions one can take to help delay that outcome at the individual level.

So you're basically advocating "I don't need to run faster than the bear, I just need to run faster than you" as a life/work foundation?

Allow me to point out how this is fundamentally not sustainable…
posted by Lexica at 6:15 PM on May 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


No, as I've said three times now, I'd rather see a solution to the underlying issues. Given that it isn't forthcoming in the next few years no matter what any of us do (Even if we get a lefty Congress in 2019 and Trump resigns/is impeached, it isn't like Pence will be signing any bills that raise taxes on the wealthy or expand the social safety net), it makes sense for individuals to muddle through the best they can until then using the "put on your own oxygen mask first" rule.

Do what you can when you can. It often won't work out, but for some it will and that is a net good. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and all that.
posted by wierdo at 3:35 AM on May 26, 2017


Understood.

However, it strikes me that the best way to encourage people to put on their own oxygen mask first would be to actually listen to them a little bit to help them find a more custom-fit oxygen mask, instead of assuming that the solution you have proposed would be a workable one for all of them. Otherwise your encouragement sounds a li'l more like preaching.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:31 AM on May 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


Fair enough. I certainly intended it as friendly advice offering a couple of possibilities out of many that are out there (zero of which are helpful to everyone, or indeed any specific person in some cases), but as we all know, it's easy for things to come across quite differently than they were intended, especially online.
posted by wierdo at 10:37 AM on May 26, 2017


Sam Irby is getting her act together and taking it on the road. The Austin appearance sounds like it will be amazing.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:23 PM on May 28, 2017


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