Hacker News Reader

But that’s not even remotely true. People’s standard of living is better than ever before and their chances of success higher than ever.

The narratives we craft define how we move in this world. This is a toxic way of thinking. It takes about $500/month throughout a working life to retire comfortably investing in just VTSAX.

View on HN

Household debt increased is past pre-2007 levels. https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html

People have certainly paid for a better standard of living, but they didn't get there with just wages.

Here's some related data that may help expand our understanding:

Household debt service payments as a percent of disposable personal income are as low as they have ever been: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP

Personal savings rate has never been better: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

Household debt to GDP saw a spike at the beginning of the pandemic, but still is much lower than we were coming out of the last recession: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N

Disposable income has never been higher: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPI

$500/mo for 40 years is only $500K at 5%/yr ROI. Good luck retiring on that. At 4% drawdown that's only $20K/year

Reply on news.ycombinator.com