You left out the part where shareholders only exist because the company needed capital and decided that selling, far more often than not, ultimately worthless ownership stake was the cheapest way to get it.

Someone mentioned elsewhere that the data may be missing the fact that many people have multiple retirement accounts following them around. You get a situation where the median or even average might be small even if the person’s total balance is not.

People need to seriously and honestly rethink post-secondary education. The fact that most people that start don’t finish should, all by itself, trigger massive skepticism. I’d wager that the financial statistics on post-secondary education don’t look so hot if you remove outliers like graduates from STEM and…

“Your opportunity cost mention, while misguided, actually does figure into it - if you can earn 12%+ return on your money - that’s good;”

That doesn’t address it either. What does the middle of the set tell you about what’s happening on either end where most people are clustered?

Accessibility is the issue. Easy financing has become available to the general population and the general population has the financial IQ and discipline of a potato. Remove the sub-prime portion of the population from the financing pool and watch prices plummet out of necessity. Just hope that they don’t scream bloody…

Unless you’re in some hot area and the place is appreciating like mad the break even on that calculation is likely a lot longer than five years... Assuming you meant total cost of ownership and not just monthly payment.

If you want federal employee health insurance benefits go work for the federal government? The idea that we all should have federal employee benefits minus the shitshow that is working for the federal government is straight up ridiculousness.

Mentioning that test is a perfect example of how people will jump through all sorts of seemingly logical hoops to justify doing what they ultimately wanted to do in the first place.

Probably spend more on insurance than you spent on the bike though.

When was the last time anyone complained about poor people that don’t have kids?

The stat you’re referring to is an average and it suffers from the same problem as per capita healthcare spending.

As interest rates continue to rise home prices will necessarily come down as it becomes more difficult/expensive to borrow. Home pricing is cyclical now. It has been that way probably since the dot com bubble was forming.

Yeah that’s what I thought. You can’t do it because it didn’t happen. 

Identify the lie.

Where’s the lie?

I’m out of touch because I can google, read, and do basic math? Is it because I know real poor people and don’t care for the whiny, entitled, middle/upper middle class nonsense that comes out of a lot of people in GMG commenter land?

Presumably we’re not talking about a 60k house so you hypothetically borrowed money and that money was not financed at 0%. There’s an opportunity cost on handing 60k over to a bank. There are carrying costs associated with homeownership too. Sure, you might have 200k in equity in a decade but how much did that 200k in…

“And let me tell you, 40K take home is the new poor.”

It was actually an honest question since you and four other people seem to think that there’s a magical difference between shareholders and owners but I guess 0/10 is where you guys’ level of understanding is.