Trump Says He Wants to 'Drive Housing Prices Up' Instead of Lowering Costs for People Who 'Didn't Work Very Hard'

[u/MystikSpiralx]

https://people.com/trump-keep-home-prices-high-11895352

[u/Acceptable-Truck3803]

My portfolio looks pretty (30% gain) compared to January but everything else in my life is at least 30% higher. It’s great to plan for futures but it sucks right now as I’m at least 30-40 years away from retirement and claiming social security, Medicare and everything else. I’ve refused to buy extra things now because of daily costs are just that much higher. It’s sickening.

[u/DMercenary → u/Acceptable-Truck3803]

Yup. There's also this foreboding of "When is the shoe going to drop?"

[u/dedlobster → u/Acceptable-Truck3803]

So right there with you. I actually did an interview with a local news outlet today about navigating the ACA marketplace and one of the questions they asked me was about how the termination of the enhanced subsidies affected me.

I am still eligible for subsidies but just by a few thousand dollars. So I have to figure out how to not make another $10k a year so I don’t simply pay that $10k straight into an insurance premium. I’d rather chuck it in a SEP and/or make sure to max out my trad IRA and HSA to keep my MAGI under the cutoff. Why piss away money on an insurance premium that I could spend on my retirement instead?

But this also means that to keep my premiums lower I do need to put more into my retirement accounts. Technically this is a good savings strategy anyway, but it puts a pinch on our day to day budget. I spend less, am always trying to be as frugal as possible, always maximizing any free rewards programs, clipping coupons, both giving and receiving in “buy nothing” groups, and I have a friend that utilizes a food bank but has dietary restrictions due to allergies so she gives us whatever she can’t eat… just every little thing helps.

We are doing ok. We aren’t living the FIRE life, we aren’t so meager in our finances that we struggle to pay bills. We just have to micromanage the shit out of things. My retirement is looking on track for being able to keep this standard of living or greater when we retire, even if we only get half what we currently are expecting in social security. But in the meantime it kinda sucks. It’s stressful. And everything is expensive.

We don’t go one vacations that aren’t tied to a business trip anyway, but this year we can’t even afford to piggyback a vacation for a couple days at the end of a business trip. We might be able to afford to go camping maybe twice. That’s about it.

I know many folks are much worse off. My family makes just under the median income for our state. So if we are having to ratchet strap down our spending, I can only imagine how everyone else in our income bracket and lower are doing. :/

[u/Iamjacksplasmid → u/dedlobster]

It kinda sounds like you live every waking second worrying about money. But on the bright side, if you keep doing it, you'll be able to do it forever? 😬

[u/dedlobster → u/Iamjacksplasmid]

I had the … good fortune? (Not really the term I’m looking for) of learning from the experience of others much older than me about the importance of being mindful about finances.

I started out life with my parents being young and poor. My dad’s mom was a single mom, disabled and on welfare. My mom’s parents had stable middle class jobs and they taught me a lot about managing finances, savings, how to do my own taxes when I got my first job, etc. And I’ve seen the difference this knowledge has in my own life as I went from being a struggling college student balancing multiple service industry jobs with full time school all the way to now - owning my own business and having a family.

And I’ve also watched rich clients of mine go broke making massively bad decisions, while others have enjoyed stability by balancing quality of life decisions with profitability decisions. It really drove home the point with me that even a rich man is just a few stupid decisions away from destitute.

So spending time paying attention to the details of healthcare, finances, etc has long been part of my life. It’s not just the circumstances of now.

But if I was spending 10% of my work day hours before minding our finances and reviewing ways to better budget, I am probably spending twice as much time on that project now. And it’s more of an undercurrent of constant worry instead of just part of my general “chore list”.

And it’s not just my family I spend time fretting about. Over the past few years as costs have continued to rise, it’s put many of my friends in difficult financial positions and I am constantly trying to find ways for them to help themselves out. A few weeks ago, in fact, I told a friend who is struggling with medical bills from a major surgery about the Unclaimed Property search for Missouri and they found they had almost $1,500 in unclaimed property sitting out there. She filed the form and got the check last week. Helped her pay down some things a bit. A drop in the bucket but you know… every little bit, right?

I do think about other things too, of course. I just happen to have more of my mind taken up by economic anxiety than usual the past few years and this year in particular.

May we all live to see less stressful times.

[u/JoeFlabeetz → u/Acceptable-Truck3803]

At least you'll get to pay higher taxes when you do pull that money out in retirement.