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Dream On: The American Dream now costs $4.4 million over a lifetime
(www.usatoday.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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While that’s more than reasonable to expect for techies, for example, in todays world, that’s CEO pay 35 years ago.
While I’m too lazy to do the math, I’d like to see
I disagree. Workers in trades like electricians will make that much. I think entry level electricians make like 55k. So after 5 years in that work, you will likely be earning above median salary. But for professions like teachers in school districts that don't pay well.... It sucks. Not ideal, but not as dire as some might think. And when you throw in the number of people these days choosing not to have kids, that shaves 1 million dollars off the cost of the American Dream life (but hard to say how much of that decision is based on expected income vs lifestyle values).
Tech workers I assume are making starting around 75k and getting into 100k fairly easily depending on geographic location. And depending on company and trajectory you could be getting into 200 to 300k territory in tech.
Now. But not 35 years ago. The article doesn’t cover inflation but since they want to end at a specific dollar amount, that matters. Since they’re not talking about savings or investing, it’s not like you can just disregard it.
The inflation piece is confusing to me to, but I think it does talk about investment. It says retirement is 1.6 million based on expected annual withdraw rate. So I'm guessing that is not the contribution amount but final amount including return on investment. So does that 4.4 million number actually somehow translate into a sub 4 million dollar contribution value? Same with college. If you start investing in college funds at child birth that have 18 years of growth, is that child cost the cost basis, or accrued value at time of spend? On the other hand the home cost includes mortgage interest, but the value of the house will hopefully exceed the cost you put into it.