I'll show my age here.....

[Top Gun]

Yeah, there's no way in hell I would choose to move halfway across the country, away from all of my family and local contacts, even if I wanted to. And I honestly wouldn't want to in the first place: I like my region, and I don't particularly want to live anywhere else. If that means renting indefinitely, so be it.

[Lothar]

Sure, because financial success is just this easy:

And as you get older, take a one-hour seminar from a legitimate financial planner...

LOL.

That one-half sentence completely explains my entire point. That's why it's the only thing I wrote, without another half-sentence attached to it explaining the context, and definitely not a whole paragraph explaining how it connects to the rest of the financial advice I've given.

Seriously though: you keep making excuses, as if the things I'm saying are far too complicated for the average middle-class individual to understand. Like they'd have to go to school full-time to get a degree in personal finance or something. But you don't need a degree in personal finance to make pretty good financial decisions and reach retirement with a nice nest egg; you just need to learn a handful of simple concepts and follow some simple rules of thumb. Don't buy too much/too expensive of a house (target 3x salary), save and invest 10%, save more every time you get a raise, put (age-20)% into bonds and most of the rest into stocks, and take 15 minutes every year to rebalance. It's not hard. It's not rocket science. It's just a series of lifestyle decisions.

there's no way in hell I would choose to move halfway across the country, away from all of my family and local contacts, even if I wanted to. And I honestly wouldn't want to in the first place.... If that means renting indefinitely, so be it.

Exactly my point: that's a decision you can make, but don't pretend it's not a decision. Don't pretend the consequence of possibly "renting indefinitely" or "not having enough money to retire" is the inevitable hand of fate; it's a result of the decision to spend more money to live in a particular place you want to live. I'm not saying it's easy to pack up and move and leave family behind -- I'm simply saying, weigh the cost you're actually paying to be close to family, and don't blame "I had no choice" for financial hardships that you choose to take on by deciding to live wherever you live.

I don't know where you live, but given that you said it's not super-expensive, I'm willing to bet that if you can't get a decent house for 3x median income, you can probably get one for 4x median income, maybe in a different suburb, or maybe in another mid-sized town that's close enough you can visit your family in the big city on weekends. You don't need to spend $400,000 on a house on a $50k income, anywhere. If you are somewhere where that's literally your only option, you actually can't afford to live there and still have a decent retirement. But you could afford to live elsewhere with a decent retirement.

Comparing middle class to your 60k/year income is very vague

The median income in the US is $52,000. And note that I didn't say "you should save half of your income"; I said it's what I was doing when my income was in that range -- which means, on a salary of only $50k/year, I would have been saving a mere 40%, which (post-tax) is over 2x the amount needed for slick's calculations to be true. Point being, I'm not talking about living a lifestyle that I personally would find unbearable, or making an amount of money that's unrealistic for the average family. I'm talking about making an average salary, spending more on a house than I did, saving at a lower rate than I did, living comfortably, and retiring with $1-3 million. Average people could do exactly that. It's not rocket science. It just requires making lifestyle choices that fit with that plan.

[callmeslick]

if so, then you cannot afford to buy in that market. Period.

What is this fantasy world you and Lothar live in where the average person (middle-class or not) can just pack up and move away from their social network and family obligations to possibly find comparable work in a cheaper city?

Again, I see you are both talking about two separate points, but neither of you are very convincing.

I am not in the Lothar camp suggesting moving distances for financial reasons(other that by choice or absolute desperation). However, I am saying that you cannot afford to BUY in that market. Not the same as not living in the region.

[woodchip]

Funny how the Latinos and North Africans are smarter than some of the people here. Huge migrations going on simply to get from one place with no opportunity to one that does.

[callmeslick]

Funny how the Latinos and North Africans are smarter than some of the people here. Huge migrations going on simply to get from one place with no opportunity to one that does.

did the word 'desperation' go over your head?

[woodchip]

Funny how the Latinos and North Africans are smarter than some of the people here. Huge migrations going on simply to get from one place with no opportunity to one that does.

did the word 'desperation' go over your head?

No, does the idea that "Desperation" may have different meanings to different groups of people go over your head?

[callmeslick]

[....does the idea that "Desperation" may have different meanings to different groups of people go over your head?

yeah, it does, sort of. I was considering about the same minimum threshold of hardship equating to desperation. That others, in other parts of the world face MORE desperate situations is rather obvious, but doesn't mean the word has a different meaning.

[snoopy]

Yes, I'll have a pile of crap. Yes I'll have to pay for repairs if needed. But at least I won't be giving a chunk of my paycheque to a dealership for the next two years.

Indeed. The chunk will be going to the car mechanic, without warning and in random quantities.

It really comes down to being willing to live at a lower level of affluence. If you want to really live more within your means, don't buy the junker... buy the smaller, one owner, baseline model that's new enough to be reliable but doesn't have all of the "addons" that inflate its value. Also, the smaller and more efficient you can go, the more you will save in gas on an ongoing basis.

I've seen the other side of the "just live within your means" coin. It's easy(ier) to say when it means selling the vacation home or when it means going out to the olive garden instead of the five star place. It's a bit harder when it means buying beans instead of ground beef, or when it means not seeing your wife and kids for months. There's always a choice. There's always a way to cut costs... but sometimes the choices involved aren't trivial.

[Top Gun]

Yeah, exactly, and I'm glad someone else picked up on the issues with the car suggestion too. You absolutely get what you pay for when it comes to a car purchase, and it's incredibly easy for that clunker to swiftly rack up repair costs well above its Kelley Blue Book value. Hell, the two cars I've had thus far (I didn't technically "own" either one, as they were/are in my parents' names) were originally owned by elderly relatives who put miniscule numbers of miles on them, but just the fact that they were more than a decade old meant that things like the air conditioning or odometer or fuel gauge or other random stuff started breaking. (And then there was a time that mice got into my air filter over the winter without me knowing, and said air filter broke up and got sucked into the engine, leaving me broken-down in the middle of a major road, but that's another story.) Spending more money for a new car, or at the very least a few-year-old used model, can wind up saving you some major headaches in the long run.

[Lothar]

Yeah, exactly, and I'm glad someone else picked up on the issues with the car suggestion too

The only car suggestion I recall being made was "don't buy a new car every 4-6 years". That doesn't mean you have to buy a 1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass and hope it doesn't break down on the way home.

In fact, I'd agree that it can be a good financial decision to buy a new car -- just, not every 4-6 years for most middle-class people. Buy a new car and drive it more like 10-12 years. Or buy a car that's a couple years old and run it for 8ish years. Don't get suckered into too many add-ons from the dealer. (I've bought 3 cars in my life -- a 12-year-old Ford Taurus wagon from my uncle, a mechanic and the vehicle's only owner, which lasted me through college; a brand-new 2004 Chevy Aveo that I still drive; and a gently used 2005 Aveo when my wife and I needed separate cars a couple years later, which is now with my sister.)