Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee
Well aren't you just the cat's meow. You may be good at investing or saving or building wealth through some good decisions, but you are horrible at displaying any humility. Ultimately, people want good advice, but you don't need to jerk yourself off to provide it. And that goes for several other people in this self-appreciating contest thread. It's like sitting around with a bunch of finance grads talking about how sweet their stocks and bonuses are, nobody gives a crap, and you aren't doing yourself a favour by bragging because this is viewed as a negative quality. There's confidence, being classy and knowing you've done well, and then there's being ######y about it.
As for the topic at hand, I believe there are 2 reasons for people being unable to save enough. One is the obvious societal change in perception on debt and how it doesn't matter if your VISA is maxxed and your largely paying interest, and the other is the fact that the buying power of a dollar today has been eroded over the years. What our baby boomer parents could do with their money was generally more... and this helped them be able to save more. And if the government really cares, maybe they should consider policies that influence the little oligopoly of banks we have in this country and allow citizens to ACTUALLY build a savings account. Thanks for the 61 cents of interest Royal Bank, that was awesome.
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I don't buy the parents dollar bought more argument, the real reason that they saved more 50 years ago is they lived simpler lives in small houses and rarely replaced anything unless it was actually broken beyond repair.
The actual things people bought in the past were far more expensive than what we spend now, if you look at old ads appliances and TVs cost about the same in dollar amount as they do now, except in those days a good wage was one 10th we get now.
It used to be ok to have 2 kids in a bedroom, you kept cars, TV's, shoes clothes etc until they were literally threadbare or un fixable.
Holidays tended to be a week camping or visiting relatives.
We don't save these days because we piss money away on Coffee machines, X boxes, Blue ray players, we throw away perfectly good cell phones because we want to be able to browse the web or BBM each other while driving regardless of the fact we already have laptops and computers all over the place.
You spoilt little b*****d's don't now how good you've got it, in my day etc etc etc.