Americans with six-figure incomes are in 'survival mode'

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/11/14/americans-with-six-figure-incomes-in-survival-mode/87253991007/

by geox • 8 months ago

18 5 8 months ago

silisili• 8 months ago

This is, in essence, what caused mass inflation in the first place.

People making $X/mo, thinking "well, I can afford a $500k house because it costs $Y a month", where Y is some nominal amount less than X. That works for a little while, until the price of everything creeps up and now Y + expenditures > X. Entirely predictable outcome.

In reality, a savvy person making $100k a year in the US can live comfortably, if they live within their means. Those last 4 words seem lost on most people, unfortunately.

shayway• 8 months ago

This hits awfully close to home -- my parents made a decent income growing up, but it was an endless cycle of buying nice houses and cars only to sell them a few years later, and somehow there was only ever barely enough for food and other necessities.

The amount of waste of even middle class earners is staggering. American culture needs to catch up with the fact that infinite growth, on both a personal and a societal level, is just not sustainable.

dzhiurgis• 8 months ago

I'd say buying anything else but house + car + groceries is a waste.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 8 months ago

This is, in essence, what caused mass inflation in the first place.

I agree with your other points but this doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem to be a cause for the inflation but instead a problem that's created by it.

arcticbull• 8 months ago

Treating everyone in the $100-999K income bucket as the same is pretty disingenuous. Yeah someone making $100K in the bay are is low income, nobody making just shy of $1M a year is struggling to make ends meet unless they have a serious shopping problem.

Americans with six-figure incomes are in 'survival mode'

Related Stories