Quote:
Originally Posted by flamesfever
My advise to lower income people, especially those just starting out, would be:
1. Only have one credit card e.g. Visa or Mastercard, and make sure you pay off the balance every month.
2. Establish a long term relationship with one bank, and work on maintaining as high a credit rating as possible.
3. Start a TFSA, and learn to invest.
4. Purchase a freezer and start buying meat and other items on sale.
5. Minimize spending by limiting to item needs and not wants, and don't get sucked in by ad campaigns. Never try to keep up with the Joneses.
6. Minimize time on social media...99% is a waste of valuable time.
7. Maintain good physical health with proper diet, exercise and adequate sleep.
8. Maintain good mental health by keeping socially active with family and friends. Get a dog. Stay positive. Be grateful for what you have.
9. DON'T WORRY...BE HAPPY
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You don’t know very many people who work for minimum wage do you?
This type of pull up your bootstrap thinking is insulting advice for the demographic you’re trying to give it to because the majority of what you’re suggesting is likely impossible to do for someone who takes home $1200/month.
1.Having one credit card is sensible, but expecting someone with a low income to pay off the balance every month seems pretty ignorant to why they would end up with a balance in the first place.
3.Start investing is also sensible, when you actually have money to do so. How far do you think an income of $1200/month is realistically going to go after you’ve put a roof over your head and fed yourself?
4.Purchase a freezer? See point number 3.
5.Minimizing spending is always good advice but at the same time it’s unrealistic to think people won’t spend money on some items you may consider to be frivolous. If the only thing you’re able to afford from working full-time is a roof over your head, food and a means to get you to and from work inflation will eventually break you before frivolous spending has a chance.
6.People should reduce their time on social media for a lot of reasons, but I don’t think it will help you with retirement.
7.Healthy food is expensive. Frankly most of what you’re suggesting is completely out of reach for someone working a minimum wage job, which means they would probably need multiple jobs to achieve these objectives, which means adequate sleep is probably not in the cards.
8.Get a dog? Seriously? This goes against a number of your other suggestions. Spending time with family and friends is all well and good but if you can’t actually afford to do so or don’t have the time because you’re working multiple jobs to make ends meet it’s really kick them while they’re down style advice IMO.
9. “Don’t worry be happy.” “Be grateful for what you have”. It’s funny, this type of thinking doesn’t even work for rich people whenever any sort of tax increase is brought up yet you think it’s going to work for low income earners who have very little. That’s rich, pun intended.
You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, but assuming you can appears to be the theme of your “advice”. I believe your heart is in the right place but most of the advice you’re giving simply just isn’t in the cards for the people you’re trying to give it to.
Here’s my suggestion to any low/minimum wage earners, use the means that are available to you to increase your compensation at your current job if you can’t find a better paying one. The more money you have, the more options you will have in life to plan for retirement. You may even end up being able to afford some of flamesfever’s suggestions that would otherwise be out of reach. Working more hours at stagnant low wages simply isn’t sustainable, without actual wage growth inflation will ensure that you continually fall further behind because there’s only so many additional hours you can actually work.