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Comment by AlwaysRock | Hacker News Reader

"Around Christmas, they decided to take the children to Mauritius to visit with family. That trip cost them $12,000, shaving their nest egg down to $9,000. Kervin wasn’t worried."

Just starting the article but... It seems like this is a pretty big issue. I couldn't imagine taking a 12K vacation. Especially if it was going to bring the total savings for my family down to 9K. That's just poor financial planning.

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> “Rent, groceries—everything is costly,” says Kervin. “You get your paycheque, and you don’t know where it goes.”

This quote really stuck out to me. It wasn't "just poor financial planning" it was absolutely no financial planning.

Was there predatory behavior on the part of the loans? Absolutely. But to me the larger take away here is the importance of budgeting, saving, and being responsible with your financial planning. They were making over $87k/year after-tax, and just a couple months after he lost his job they had liquidated their entire savings.

I had the same reaction. I don't want to judge anybody too harshly for their choices, but it definitely makes it harder for me to view them as victims of a systematic hollowing out when they are making choices like this. A $12k vacation is a luxury by any standard and something I could not justify for myself even with a much more stable financial footing than the article describes for this family.

Everyone I know goes south every single year. The Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico but also Thailand, Australia. All they do is sit on a beach and drink until blackout drunk.

I have never gone on a trip to any of those places or anywhere else because I save my money (I'd rather Rome or Tokyo). Yet people with absolutely no money or on unemployment, a dozen kids etc. It seems everyone goes no matter the cost and every single year.

I know people say "travel now while you can" but I don't want to be 65, poor, an alcoholic, and with with blond hair, bald and blue eyes I'd probably end up with melanoma.

This is the same crowd that goes to Timmies two or three times a day yet poo poos Starbucks.

They do it to escape from reality. Day-to-day grind is unbearable.

Labor has never had it easier than it does right now in 2017, in a G8 country.

The mental gymnastics required to tell a 1930s sharecropper, an 1890s coal miner, or a 1770s battlefield medic that writing javascript in an air-conditioned cubicle for 45 hours a week is "unbearable".

Vacations are absolutely a luxury. A luxury that is increasingly "required" by modernity with Facebook and Instagram posts convincing people that their lives are less than that of others.

Good thing we don't have enough people from the 1930s, 1890s, or 1770s around to really weigh in on this.

Different times, different stresses. Vacations are a necessity, whether it's going out to the world or just retreating inside your house for a staycation on the weekends.

Truck driver I know in Canada does 12 hour shifts. It's just enough to make ends meet at minimum wage.

Labor has it easy when you have marketable skills. If you don't you will end up with a real problem.

Fortunately truck drivers are well paid.

Haha. That's so funny. $11.40 / Hour driving a dump truck on the local beat. Most people on HN would not even get out of bed for a wage like that.

> The 2016 full-time average hourly wage rate for transport and heavy equipment operation and related maintenance occupations, which includes truck drivers, is $21.00. The 2016 corresponding median weekly wage rate is $950, giving an approximate full-time annual salary for this employment group of $49,000.

So significantly less than the median wage. How exactly does that make truck drivers "well paid"?

Median income is less than $40,000.

> The mental gymnastics required to tell a 1930s sharecropper, an 1890s coal miner, or a 1770s battlefield medic that writing javascript in an air-conditioned cubicle for 45 hours a week is "unbearable".

I don't know, I think they'd find a lot of suffering in common. The sharecropper can sympathize with the tragedy of property ownership. The coal miner has nightmares about seeing his canary drop. And the battlefield medic definitely knows everything about missing semi-colons.

Yeah, I'm dealing with that now with one of my family relatives. They don't make that much but somehow manage to go to Mexico, Thailand, DR, wherever and spend a ton of money they don't have. And then they expect me to participate in buying stuff on credit unnecessarily despite me telling them that I can't do this. I'm good, thanks.

Many people in the uk have no savings or less than £100 $9000 is quite a lot.

When unemployed?

in the general employed public. The average UK citizen is actually really poor compared to Americans.

Average or Median, it makes a big difference.

US Average wealth is $300,000, Median Wealth is $44,000 (source http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/11/news/economy/middle-class-we...)

The US is skewed very heavily by a small number of very rich people at the top

For comparison UK median is £104,000 (Source https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8239)

Oh, I actually meant "do you consider that a lot of money to have when unemployed?". Because, I wouldn't. (Even though it's more than many have saved when they lose jobs)

$9000? Yeah that would be an awful lot of money for even an employed person to have saved over here.

$12,000 is even more.

That is...so weird to me. I'd be petrified of shelling out that much cash while not working. What happens to road trips closer to home?

To put this in context, they were visiting their family (in Mauritius) after the birth of their new child. It's still irresponsible to spend such a large amount of money in that kind of situation - with that amount I guess they didn't look for the cheapest travel options, and lived in an expensive hotel instead of staying with their family - but it's not like they just went there for the beaches, as it looked like when I first read the comment.

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