Tag: finance

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It is okay to have low ambitions.

I agree STRONGLY with this Tumblr post. People should be ABLE to work at the grocery store and make enough to support a family. That is how a functional society works. Grocery store workers (and other people in the service sector) are absolutely essential members of our society, and should not be disrespected and told that their jobs are only suitable for children.

Screenshot of a Tumblr post discussing societal expectations regarding job ambition and income, featuring comments about working at Taco Bell and personal definitions of success.
A reflection on the value of low-ambition jobs in society, emphasizing the importance of fair wages for essential work.

(U) I used an AI assistant to generate alt text and a caption there. It did a good job. Interesting.

I used Google Drive’s Optical Character Recognition to OCR the text, so here’s that, too:

User “youthincare”:

people should be allowed to have low ambition, and also be able to feed a family on the salary of a cashier at a convenience store.

User “kidsomeday”:

My very first job was at Taco Bell, and most of us working there were horrible young adults with horrible young adult problems, but one of my coworkers was a woman in (I think) her 50s.

And us horrid young adults would ask her why she still worked at Taco Bell, because it was starter job and who would want to stay there forever? Her response?

“I make enough money to make sure I always have roses in my bedroom.”

This answer changed me as a person. It changed the way I thought about what makes someone successful, and made me step back and realize that I was so caught up in what I thought success and

happiness should mean that I didn’t know what I wanted them to mean.

Which is to say that sometimes ambition is making enough money to keep fresh roses in your bedroom, and you should be able to do that working at Taco Bell.

I like that.

And yes, low ambition means this person will never have a 7-bedroom house. That is OKAY. It is okay that not everyone will always be able to have the nicest and biggest things. But people should be able to have basic things on a basic salary: an apartment, health care, enough food to eat, access to information and education. It is a problem when people cannot have those things.

(And I know nobody argues with me anymore now that I’ve moved to this blog instead of Facebook; but if you want to go toe to toe on “frivolous” expenses, bring a real life budget and let’s dissect.)

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Your son might work bagging groceries for the rest of his life.

Saw this Substack post today.

https://substack.com/@carriecariello/note/c-166796284?r=2ng1ln

“Your son might work in a grocery store bagging groceries for the rest of his life.”

And? So what? That’s an important job. Grocery stores are fundamental in keeping our society running.

The people who work in our grocery stores are an important part of our community.

And they should be able to afford to live in any community in this country.

This is why I support subsidized housing in my neighborhood. Because people like Jack deserve to live among people like me.

Don’t be an ableist, classist shitheel. Support integrated subsidized housing.

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Money is not morality

While shooting the breeze with a friend tonight I realized that “Poor people are degenerates” and “Don’t tell me I can’t afford something I ought to be able to afford!” attitudes are two sides of the same coin.

The first position, commonly associated with rich assholes who think they are self-made, is a mistake because it assumes that someone’s income or wealth is solely a factor of their moral character, i.e. their willingness to work hard to accomplish their goals. However, that is not the case. Not all hard work is equally remunerated; the free market doesn’t care how hard you work, but only about the supply and demand of your skill. It’s fundamentally amoral. (Remember, don’t confuse “amoral” with “immoral.”) This is also the primary reason why we should not trust in the market to take care of people. The market does not care if you live or die.

The second position, which I see more in people on my side of the political aisle, is born out of a place of frustration and anger. It’s the idea that “if I can’t buy a house on 30% of my income, then that guideline is wrong and bad and shaming! Don’t shame me!” But having or not having money is not (or shouldn’t be!) a locus of shame or pride. It’s just a matter of numbers. But people see “you can’t afford to buy a house yet,” and they take it as a moral attack on their value as human beings.

Neither of these attitudes are good. If you find yourself falling into either one, please try to remind yourself: money is not a measure of your inherent worth as a human being.

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Romney Poor

A few years ago, I remember the Romney family getting in hot water rhetorically speaking because one of them (I think it was Ann?) said something very tone-deaf about financial difficulties. It was along the lines of “Yes, we too have known poverty. Why, one time during graduate school, we had to sell some stock to make ends meet!”

I think about this a lot, when I see finance getting talked about on the Internet. If you are well off, there’s a certain level of desperation that you will simply never know, because you have enough cushion/backup (whether that’s from your own savings, family support, or savings you have BECAUSE of earlier family support).

One of my friends and I have a running gag about the very un-self-aware articles that are sometimes published in places like Business Insider. You probably know the drill: “This plucky young lad paid off $120,000 of student loans before age 30! What an inspiration!” Then you read the article and (a) there is no budget presented, and (b) the most mathematically significant “tip” offered is something like “He chose to live with his parents to save money on rent” (good! If you can swing it!) “and also rented out the Harlem condominium his grandmother gifted him upon graduation for $4000 a month of extra income! What a hustle grindset, am I right?” (Laughably out of reach for almost everyone in the country).

The thing that makes these puff pieces laughable is the lack of a written budget and the lack of comparability to even the median American, let alone the lower quartiles.

Someone recently shared this article in a space I’m in, and people immediately started talking shit about the interviewee. At first glance, I agreed – if he’s got very wealthy parents, that’s why, right?

But then I actually clicked on it, and there were a couple features that made this different from the normal puff pieces.

  1. The very first sentence of the article acknowledged his privilege in growing up wealthy. There’s a lot of benefit that you get from even just turning 21 with a net worth of Zero, let alone a positive net worth, that can be hard to articulate. Additionally, being surrounded by people who are making good financial decisions (regardless of how easy it is to make them) helps build the right attitudes about money and savings. It’s why the whole “role model” thing is so important. It’s why mentoring is important.
  2. The article actually included his monthly budget and how he got there. $2000/mo for a studio he shares with a partner is actually not completely insane, even in DC. Would everyone want or be able to live like that? Of course not. But this isn’t “live in genteel poverty in your father’s estate’s carriage house while renting out your condominium for pocket change” nonsense.
  3. 82k is actually a decent income in this area, especially if you’re half of a two-income household. And saving 20% of that means he’s effectively living on 65k, which – while not great – is still pretty okay.

I would have preferred slightly more acknowledgement that not everyone can join the military (due to medical restrictions and so forth) but overall? It’s actually a pretty good article.

Anyway. I was just having some feelings about that, and it made me think of the “Romney poor” concept at the same time.

It’s important to keep things in perspective, no matter what stage of the journey you’re on.

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Personal Incarnation Finance

My friend just pointed out that if you have the expensive kind of Magic cards, that’s a cardstock portfolio.

I will be using this joke at every opportunity.

If you are a person who’s fortunate enough to have the expensive kind of Magic cards, I recommend that you maintain a listing (perhaps a private deck list on Moxfield, or similar) to track the value of your “portfolio.” Cards can appreciate in value without you realizing it, especially if you’re not currently in the game.

When it comes to realizing (making real) those gains, though, I don’t have any advice. It’s not always easy to find a buyer, and if you’re unfamiliar with internet marketplaces it can be too easy to get scammed.

My own Magic card strategy is “buy and play,” rather than “buy and hold.” (Although I don’t get as much play as I would like.) (No, I will not edit that sentence.) In general, I recommend that people who collect things do so because they enjoy the things, not because they think it’ll have a payoff. (See: my grandmother’s Hummel figurines.)

But it’s never a bad idea to keep an eye on collectible value, just on principle.

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Unethical inheritance

“Launder that money through love” is a beautiful take on this advice letter.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2025/04/16/carolyn-hax-tobacco-fortune-solo-heir/

If you inherit money, I definitely support using some of it to better the world around you. Donate some of it to charity.

But as far as your own obligations go? As long as “unethical” doesn’t mean that it was stolen (the example case was money earned from the tobacco industry), you have no obligation to do any particular thing with it. Use it to secure your family’s future and make life easier for the next generation of humans.

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Why I like index funds

This quote from Monica Hesse really says it all:

Whatever the American Dream once was, for whole generations of us, it has been distilled down to a 3 percent match. You get to be in charge of your own destiny, was the enthusiastic promise of the 401(k). You get to decide what investments are right for you. Never mind that I have no business deciding what investments are right for anybody. Sir, I majored in English.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/14/stock-market-crash-retirement-savings-myth/

Don’t try to time the market. Don’t try to pick stocks unless you’re doing it for funsies. Just park your retirement money in a lifecycle fund and wait it out. Don’t buy into the hyper-individualistic idea that you can control everything about your life. (That also leads us down the Just World Fallacy path!)

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Reddit on the markets today

I just wanted to highlight this comment that I saw on Reddit this morning.


https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/s/F8ntmtttGp

There are two things that could ultimately happen with the S&P 500.

1. It could stabilize and continue to increase over time as it’s done for the last 68 years.

2. It could crash, along with the US economy, and never recover.

It’s important to note that if #2 happens, you and I will have far more things to worry about than the value of our retirement as it indicates the total collapse of the US economy (S&P 500 represents 80% of US market cap). In that case, it wouldn’t matter if your money were in the market or in a box in the backyard, it would be similarly worthless.

So, given that there is nothing you can do to protect the value of your money in the event of #2, you might as well continue to invest believing that #1 is much more likely (cause it is).

Don’t panic. Don’t sell your stock. Hunker down and wait it out.

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Value vs Value

A letter writer in this week’s Hax chat drove me absolutely bananas.

She writes that “our work is equally valuable” – but she doesn’t indicate that she understands the multiple Senses of the word “value.”

Not all work is Remunerative.

Not all work is Emotionally Fulfilling.

These two things are orthogonal to one another. A job that puts a roof over your family’s head is Valuable-like-Remunerative. A job or hobby that makes you happy is Valuable-like-Fulfilling.

The LW needs to understand that she has an obligation to ensure that her children do not go homeless. That doesn’t make her hobby work any less Fulfilling or whatever, but it does mean that the fact that her hobby work is not Remunerative is a HUGE FUCKING ISSUE.

Here’s the text. I’ll go get the full link in a bit.

The end of our beautiful work paradigm
Guest
12:55 p.m.


Dear Carolyn,

My husband and I have always had an understanding that our work is equally valuable, even though his work is more traditional and brings in consistent benefits/salary, while mine is a balance of occasional freelance work that pays and artistic passion projects that usually don’t pay (some years actually costs us money). Getting to the place where we are mutually respectful of each other’s work took years and some therapy to achieve, but until recently we are in agreement that I am just as entitled to dedicate energy to my work as he is to his. (This would come up, for example, in balancing childcare and housework responsibilities—I get equal time to work even if the money it brings in isn’t equal.)

The problem is that with the looming federal overhaul, my husband’s work is more important and more vulnerable than ever. We’re okay for now, but we had a Come to Jesus talk the other day where he suggested (and I agreed) that there may be a point where we have to live on savings. If that happens, he says, we will need to both prioritize paid work, and we will both have to do whatever is possible to keep him employed (even if it means I no longer get my equal time).

As much as I understand why this has to be, my whole soul jumps up in rage against it. Carving out my weekly work hours was such a hard-won victory and one I feel defensive of with everyone outside my home, and now I have to go back to fighting for it with my husband too? His answer to that is “But we have to pay the mortgage.” Yes, but this was a beautiful phase and I am so angry that it’s ending. Any advice?

Carolyn Hax
Advice Columnist
You’re entitled to your anger, certainly. But you’re not entitled to dump it on the wrong person just because this is your personal third rail.

If I read you correctly, any compression to your time window for your work — if it happens — will come from forces outside your marriage. So get angry at them, not your husband.

Then find some healthy outlet for your anger so it doesn’t harm you and your husband through corrosion — which isn’t overtly wrong the way blaming him for his job vulnerability would be, but is an insidious problem that’s within your power to address.

This is all “if”; maybe the chaos fairy leaves you alone.

But related to this: The hard work you did to create and defend this arrangement can make protecting it your emotional default even when your husband’s mental health is the valid priority. If you can’t trust him, yourself and the foundation of your arrangement — enough to leave it “unguarded” while you prioritize him through (literally) newsmaking stress and turmoil — then that could create much bigger problems than whether you preserve the structure of your deal.

A deal that, I do want to note, grants 50-50 value to each of your work when yours apparently gives you passion/soul satisfaction and his carries the family. Any soul/passion payoff in it for him? Okay for me to assume not?

Either way, just on the money front: While I cheer the idea of granting equal value to work for the sake of work and not just for what it pays, it does seem as if your husband took on extra mental load in this deal financially.

While you’re waiting to see what happens and still just talking about this, you can — calmly — make it clear that you want any adjustments to be responsive to the moment only and not a permanent ceding of ground that has been so meaningful to you. Or, if you trust him to knwo this already, say out loud that you trust him. But I would save all that for after you convey to him that you will, of course, not leave him to carry ALL the worries of how the family’s bills will get paid if the chaos fairy does visit him.

Right? You will, if it comes to that, do whatever your family needs?