What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[REPO Man]

Actually I found it for $200. I just have two more monthly payments of roughly $67 left.

[stickem]

My work gave me that phone and it's worst phone I've ever had. ran ok for awhile then got slower and slower, locked up or bogged down all the time. I hated it and they replaced it with a pixel series. I don't do much or download crap on my work phone and it just sucked anyway. I'd never get one for personal use.

[REPO Man]

Personally I'd love to be able to splurge on a really high-end phone, but even with a decent payment plan they typically cost more than what I spend a month on rent.

[Limewater]

I bought a Motorola Moto G6 for $120 in November 2019. It still meets all of my needs.

[stickem]

Personally I'd love to be able to splurge on a really high-end phone, but even with a decent payment plan they typically cost more than what I spend a month on rent.

I hear you. Getting a bit outrageous

[Ack]

Personally I'd love to be able to splurge on a really high-end phone, but even with a decent payment plan they typically cost more than what I spend a month on rent.

I hear you. Getting a bit outrageous

"A bit" doesn't begin to describe. Between this and what stuff like cars cost these days, I have no idea how anyone affords anything.

[REPO Man]

My post in the Wes Anderson subreddit, where I ask "What are they dancing to? Wrong answers only" with a GIF of Sam and Suzy dancing to Francois Hardy's "Le Temps de L'Amour", has only been up the better part of three days and it's already gotten 172 upvotes (93% upvoted), 107 comments and 38 total shares.

FYI, this is my third-most upvoted post across all of Reddit, the first two being my story about the Midjourney knockoff from the deep web and my American Dad fan theory about how Steve's future self keeps affecting the timeline.

[Limewater]

"A bit" doesn't begin to describe. Between this and what stuff like cars cost these days, I have no idea how anyone affords anything.

I'm arguably cherry-picking, but if you compare the 1984 Toyota Camry base MSRP to the 2024 Toyota Corolla base MSRP and adjust for inflation using the BLS CPI Inflation calcuator, the Corolla is slightly cheaper. This is an appropriate comparison because the Camry in 1984 occupied the market segment the Corolla does today. The '84 Camry was the compact, but it's now full-size. The '84 Corolla was economy, but now it's compact.

I gave this topic a lot of attention a decade ago, comparing US Government GS-scale wages with rent, college tuition, vehicles, and house purchasing for the years 1984, 1994, 2004, and 2014. For college, vehicles, and home purchases, I baselined specifically to a four-year degree at the University of Maryland, a Toyota Camry (for '84) or Corolla afterwards, and a house on a specific street in Columbia Maryland where I could find a lot of sales records. Rent was a bit harder to baseline, as those records are more generalized.

The basic transportation car got slightly cheaper (based on MSRP) over time. Mortgage rates decreased over time.
However, the huge jumps in college tuition, home prices, and rent prices blew those factors away.

[opa]

I got a new car recently. I didn't want to but my rust bucket was starting to have issues and I didn't want to put any more money into it.

The dealership was really trying to push a used car (the previous year's model with 70k miles) for more than the new model. Literally the only difference between the one I got and that used car was the used one was technically the "step up" in terms of features (features that I didn't want btw).

Pricing on everything is out of control.

[REPO Man]

However, the huge jumps in college tuition, home prices, and rent prices blew those factors away.

And made worse by the fact that the minimum wage hasn't kept pace with inflation. We haven't had an increase at the federal level since 2009, when it was raised to $7.25, which adjusted for inflation is the equivalent to $10.55. So that means that $7.25/hr today is worth LESS than it was in 2009.

Also, I double checked and apparently if one were to work in NYC for 60 hours a week between multiple jobs, that'd be worth 720 a week after taxes.

Can anyone in NYC verify if this makes sense?