That’s ~$7000 more than the median earnings of the overall population (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm).
There will be college grads struggling and non grads thriving, but on average a person just out of college is doing at least as well as the general population income wise and can expect their incomes to rise with time.
> That’s ~$7000 more than the median earnings...
You shouldn't be comparing an average to a median. You should be using either the average earnings, or the median new grad salary.
She has a car to worry about though. That’s more than I ever had.
It’s not a pissing match. Not trying to take away from their experience. I just feels it’s weird that US people always say gas and cars are so expensive when relatively, gas is incredibly cheap in the USA (not sure about cars, but given how many there are, they should be cheaper too).
It's an old beat up car with 150k miles that was given to them.
She goes to Western North Carolina University. There are no buses, there are no sidewalks, every road is essentially a divided highway. It's not a lifestyle choice where they are living 50 miles away from where they work. Even then, the car was used to go to Hurricane Helene Relief volunteering, otherwise it's for groceries, and to take them to trail heads to hike.
Even then, I'm speaking to the point that they have NO extra money. The lifestyle of burning $30/month in gas is not the point nor the issue.
Second reaction - jeez - what a garbage assumption to make. Paraphrasing you: "oh, they must just spend too much to have any money. Bad life choices." Garbage assumption dude, you so missed the mark - you would be ashamed if you knew the person in question here.
Further, they are not the only person I know in that situation - and if it were just due to excess of spending money; I would have not raised it as an example of "my sampling bias".
It's very bad practice to assume and then contradict someone else's lived experience based on that assumption. It's a great way to be wrong, way wrong (and sometimes not even know it). Your bet is bad. I'm sure there are plenty of examples out of the millions of people that we are talking about, where it would be right. In this case, nope - just ignorant and wrong.