Not to mention people are encouraged to do zero planning for the student debts and get pressured by family to buy new cars.
There’s so much of wealth that comes down to lifestyle and educating people on personal finance which would go way farther than just telling people to get a $100k degree and ‘study hard (for rote testing)’. Here in Canada where I live the debt levels are still insane and didn’t decline like the US did, even without the healthcare bills excuse.
Politicians love blaming external factors and rich people/big corporations for all our upward mobility issues, which obviously play a roles but it’s hardly the full story, I’m curious how far we could improve things through culture and how we teach our kids to spend money. This was a personal finance culture that was far more popular in the west in the recent past eras which we people constantly romanticize about and point to different single things to explain it all away (ie unions).
My girlfriend is amazing with money and saves everything, both her parents do the same, which is the opposite of me in my early 20s before I read into it and my parents growing up too. I’m convinced parenting combined with culture (she’s Han Chinese and they tend to be thrifty similar Scottish people and Jugaad in India[1], among others) has a significant impact on these trajectories.
I've inherited not spending money from my (not Scottish) parents. It's taken an effort to spend money in social situations, so I'm not seen as miserly.
They either start their own company/contracting, become highly specialized professionals, or get a degree and take some boring white collar job that pays better.
Managing finances is just a gimmick when you have zero disposable income. That's basically 24/7/365 crisis management.
Sure, if you manage to get some savings/credit-score together it's very important what you spend it on. (Eg classes/moving or finally doing that trip to Vegas you always dreamed about.) But if you can't increase your income significantly, then investing or spending it makes no difference. (Because investing it is just continuing the saving, for whatever purpose, let's say to have a rainy day fund, or medical emergency fund, amd spending it just decreases the years you spent saving up, but your overall lifetime income will not change much, thus your range of possibilities won't either.)
I've been a software contractor for the last ~18 months. I do it because it affords me the ability to spend my time exactly how I want to, mostly reading and researching. But I also have reduced my contracting time as much as possible and this year my income will have been ~30k.
I've gotten to the end of my rope, and it's stressful and weighs on me 24/7, especially with my fear of an upcoming recession.
I decided to find a job again and in just a month I've been able to get multiple offers lined up for 5x my current income.
On the one hand, I use my position to its fullest--and I've spent the better part of a year learning things I never would have learned in a University or employment setting.
On the other hand, I recognize that this is an incredibly privileged position, one which I don't feel very deserving of. I understand the market forces, yes, but I can't help but feel a tinge of guilt knowing that I can be somewhat irresponsible financially just to pull myself out within two months of a new paycheck.
My parents were careful with money, but not necessarily frugal. I think part of it was the fact that my mom (and probably my dad at least at one point) had a pension to look forward to. I've thought before a lot on how that probably changes the calculus quite a bit.
I seem to have picked up some pathological fear of not having enough, so I probably live excessively below my means.
Growing up, I didn't even know that normal people could invest money in the stock market. Even now, I have friends that look at me sort of funny when I mention having a significant amount of money in the market. Usually they ask why I don't do something useful to it like buy a nicer house, car, etc.
If you're highly driven to achieve the goal of spending-consuming, that's unlikely to get you anywhere particularly interesting.
In my experience it's much more about how you manage the money you make, i.e.:
1. live below your means
2. invest the difference - put your money to work for you
For example, in the last week there was a bank that accidentally deposited $120,000 in the account of a couple. The couple immediately went on a spending spree, buying all kinds of very expensive items. By the time the police got involved, the money was gone.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/08/bank-acc...
Criminality aside, the "gee I have some extra money, let's go shopping!" is how one remains poor for life.