Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/28/living-paycheck-paycheck-is-disturbingly-common-i-see-no-way-out <comment><USER2> Don't discount the weight of emotional trauma and the self-sabotaging habits it has the potential to engender.

Most people are slaves to their limbic systems.

Most people don't have self-education or resources to seek the help they need to fix these underlying problems.

Society does them no favors. Media and advertising are designed to promote consumption. And not even healthy consumption.

The idea that we are black boxes with private worlds and perfect agency is being eroded by the empirical evidence that, at scale, we are ultimately manipulable.

I know because I wrestle with this constantly. My higher self knows what's right and how I should spend my time and money. On a daily and minutely basis, my lower self vyes for control and often succeeds in taking the wheel. And I have to catch myself and recognize when my long term efforts are being subverted automatically and mechanistically.

I know that, over the years, my unaddressed early childhood traumas have compounded into deeply-ingrained habits of self-medicating.

It's a constant struggle.

I am not surprised that there are huge numbers of people who struggle similarly and are not as successful as I am at managing this internal conflict.

edit: why is this article now flagged? :(

<comment><USER3> I think the very fact that people in wildly different circumstances are living paycheck to paycheck is a huge flag that this isn't as simple a problem as "they don't get paid enough".

Income and expenses are intricately linked by psychology. It's almost irrelevant what your paycheck is, if you're prone to this problem then somehow expenses will always rise to meet it.

If expenses weren't actually determined by paycheck, the number of people living paycheck to paycheck would be a really small number. Everyone else would either be building a surplus each month or going further into debt.

<comment><USER4> Huge difference between living paycheck to paycheck because you struggle to afford basic necessities and living paycheck to paycheck because you took out too large of a mortgage. In one case you have an asset to sell if needed.

<comment><USER5> The trouble is, in America the bigger mortgage often comes with a better school district.

<comment><USER6> > The trouble is, in America the bigger mortgage often comes with a better > school district.

That's because our metric for school and school district quality largely is a measure of effects of socioeconomic status of the students, not anything the schools actually produce. So, yes, the schools in areas that have a higher buy-in cost have better marks, because they have on-average students better set-up for success.

That doesn't mean the students in that district, if individually moved to a different district, would do worse, it just means that the students who would do worse independent of district are lesd likely to have parents that can afford to live in the "better" district.

<comment><USER7> It is actually more due to the students who are not there. Yes it is true that the actual teaching is little better between districts, but the number of disruptive students that prevent any learning is vastly less in the expensive districts.

If you have the ability to kick out any student who is disruptive you can turn any school in any area into a high quality school.

<comment><USER6> > the number of disruptive students that prevent any learning is vastly less.

The evidence doesn't really support that, though; students in a "bad" district don't have worse performance than students with similar background in a "better" district (whether because of distraction or any other reason), "better" districts just have more students with backgrounds which are correlated with educational success, of which the strongest factor is parental education.

<comment><USER5> The OECD report (this one: [http://www.oecd.org/education/school/programmeforinternation...](http://www.oecd.org/education/school/programmeforinternationalstudentassessmentpisa/35920726.pdf)) would like you to believe that student background does not determine student performance. They do find a correlation, but it varies substantially between countries, suggesting that other factors are at play.

According to that report the important factors are student and teacher discipline and school atmosphere, and on can easily understand why all of these might be better in an affluent suburb.

<comment><USER8> In my city, there are 5 high schools in different parts of the city. There is a huge difference between the rankings of 2 schools compared to the remaining three. Funding and teacher pool are pretty much the same source. The main difference is the students and their families. The parents in those areas are well educated and have high income. If anything the best performing schools looks like a dump compared to the 3 lower performing ones. I'd say student background plays a huge part on their performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most comments in this thread are about learning to budget/control finances.

I would just like to point out what I call "The IT bubble". We all make money here. Most of us make good money. Our social circles are filled with people making money.

Most people do not have this privilege. Below a certain threshold there is no such thing as budgeting/finances. It's just survival. You're not gonna budget because you can't save enough to do anything real with it, so you use it to make your life just a little easier. In my country (Slovenia, aka. EU member country) over 70% of people make less than the "average pay" and most of those make minimal pay.

At least here the problem isn't financial illiteracy. The problem is that they (a) make way too little to live off and (b) worker protections have eroded past any sane point.

<comment><USER10> Most of us didn't wind up in IT by random accident though: the prudent behavior of our parents fostered an appreciation of a value system that ultimately leads to life comfort, including the discipline to forego short- term pleasure in order to obtain it. These are educable elements that COULD be instilled in schools if teachers weren't hamstrung by administrators, politicians, and parents allowed to second guess their every move.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately "just learn to code" which is what I understand your argument boils down to is, in my experience, false. I've mentored many young adults who mostly had zero IT experience and were looking to break into the field to do exactly what you're suggesting. A lot of them succeeded. But a lot of them didn't. And not just because they "were not good/smart/hardworking enough", but because they were people whose personality was incompatible with IT.

IT isn't for everyone nor should it be. What would the world look like if everyone worked in IT? Well our paychecks would be a lot lower for one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who didn't learn the very basics of personal finance at the optimal point in life, I feel like it should be part of our standardized education. I'd like to think that would make things at least marginally better.

Another thing I'd love to see, would be for banks to fundamentally reorient themselves to be their customer's advocates/financial guardians, instead of being yet another party encouraging people to borrow more than they ought to. Wishful thinking, I know. My bank knows how much I make, it knows how often I get paid, it knows how much I spend and on what - they have all the info they need to develop a plan to ensure my financial security and advise me where I can do better. Why don't they and why isn't it a standard part of opening account(s)? I'd love to see more innovation around encouraging proper saving habits and budgeting, like what simple.com is doing - but it needs to go even farther than what they currently have, IMHO.

<comment><USER12> So, when you log into the Bank of America website, you want to be greeted every time with things like the following?

"Dude, maybe you should sell this car that you're paying $450 per month for and get a $7000 used car."

"Did you know that between starbucks and happy hour you spend an average of $120 per week, and that amounts to 10% of your take-home pay?"

"You currently spend $2500 per month on rent. If you downsize from 2 bedrooms to 1, you can save $X over the next 3 years."

<comment><USER13> An automated fiduciary would be a huge boon, the robotic equivalent of a piggy bank. But it should be client side; it's role is to screen you from from being exploited by those who you do business with, including your bank.

<comment><USER14> >But it should be client side

This too will be co-opted by the greedy who look to profit in the short term, even if just to profit in the app. The boom bust cycle just shows up too many times in history not to be caused by a failure in the human psyche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Its much harder (not impossible) to attain wealth if you don't come from at least an upper middle class background. Having a safety blanket (family) that can support you if you fail allows you to take greater risks in the pursuit of greater income, including starting a business. If you fail, worst case you end up in your childhood bedroom as opposed to on the the street. If your parents are able to pay for your college tuition, you are provided with a much stronger launch pad.

Many (most?) people are not taught financial responsibility and how to budget or run a household in school or at home, I believe that it is this lack of knowledge that really inflicts long term harm and feel that it should be required in both high school and college. My parents never knew how to manage money and so I never learned. I am taking the time to educate my self now, but you never even know you are missing out until life hits you in the face one day.

The greatest indicator of where you will end up financially continues to be where you started from.

<comment><USER16> > If your parents are able to pay for your college tuition, you are provided > with a much stronger launch pad.

Ain't that the truth. I've spent 10 years at ~$1300/month paying my student loans down. I'm two years from done, but that would have been half a mortgage paid off! To be fair, though, I knew squat about personal finance coming out of college, so I probably would've burned the money some other way.

<comment><USER17> Quick back of the envelope calculation ($1300/month * 12 months/year * 12 years = $187,200) shows part of the problem - either college should not be necessary (we need a programmer's guild) or the cost of college is way too high.

<comment><USER18> _guild_ ? you know that historically they where set up to restrict access

<comment><USER19> And keep up standards. I personally enjoy the idea of having apprentice, journeyman and master programmers.

<comment><USER18> All good if your Dad is a Guild Member not so much if your an immigrant for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _National data on the paycheck-to-paycheck experience is flimsy, but a recent report from the Federal Reserve spotlights the prevalence of extra-tight budgets: Four in 10 adults say they couldn't produce $400 in an emergency without sliding into debt or selling something, according to the 2017 figures._

This quote links to a report from the Federal Reserve, which contains this gem:

 _When asked about their finances, 74 percent of adults said they were either doing okay or living comfortably in 2017—over 10 percentage points more than in the first survey in 2013._

[https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-repor...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-report- economic-well-being-us-households-201805.pdf)

In other words, the survey finds tat 4/10 people can't cough up $400, yet 3/4 say things are fine for them personally.

Later in the report:

 _To assess actual financial literacy, respondents are asked five basic questions about finances (table 34)._

The most missed question (42% of responded answered correctly):

 _Considering a long time period (for example, 10 or 20 years), which asset described below normally gives the highest returns [Stocks, Bonds, Savings accounts, Precious metals]_ [Correct answer is Stocks]

I suspect that the view of things being fine financially may be a case of ignorance is bliss.

<comment><USER21> Also just not having a plan. I can usually tell how I'm doing by looking at my financial goals and comparing them to what my numbers are.

Goals force you to think beyond paying for your cable subscription!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to read more about the history of the people in the article.

The biggest issue as far as I can tell is that it's easy to 'lose' at any stage. You can make a ton of decisions starting from about age 15-20 that influence your degrees of freedom at age 40 (in the article there's a family of 3 that seemingly have little savings, for example).

If you were born to a non wealthy household, the reality is that you simply don't get to go through life not focusing on money. Your income, investments, and career have to be at the forefront of your mind, always. And even then there's a ton of chance involved.

<comment><USER23> ^^^ This 110%. I grew up in a poor family. Had friends that were well off and didn't have to think much about the future. I noticed early on that I just didn't have that luxury. Fortunately I was aware enough at an early age that every decision I make has to be a good one. I can't afford any failures. I don't think thats a good a way to become an adult or raise a society. By 25 I was at a good place but not without issues. I was having multiple anxiety attacks and all kinds of health issues. I made it out but with scars.

There has to be a better way.

<comment><USER24> I'm 27.

You know, it's funny - most of my friends who were "well enough" are the same ones who'd blame people for not working enough thus not being "successful". Modern conservatives, if you like.

Nah, I am well enough because I was intelligent enough to see beyond the horizon of my abilities back then (you could also say I was idealistic enough to be reckless and believe in that distant future).

Most of the poor people of my background never had that chance, to see beyond that horizon. They gave up earlier than they should have - but can you blame them?

Because as I've already said in my first paragraph those who are "well enough" in the first place, today are as blind to their privilege as much the poor are blind to what they could have if they worked enough.

I am in a good place now. Probably even better than those who were "well enough", but the price for that is the realisation of how lucky I am and how much I wish the world wasn't this way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One of the simplest and most effective things I did recently was to split my bank account into two checking accounts, and one savings account. I carry two debit cards with me that are visually distinct. One is for day to day purchases, and the other is meant for bills and the occasional unusual expense, like maybe tools for a surprise home repair.

Each time I get paid (every two weeks) I have my employer deposit the sum into the bills account, and I've set up a recurring transfer on the same day into the spending account. I essentially _pay myself_ a portion of my paycheck. I allow myself to swipe my spending card for just about anything: gas, eating out, games, clothing, etc. But if I decide to use my bills card, that's a conscious choice. I _know_ , right there in the moment, that I'm breaking my own rule.

It's _kinda shocking_ how effective this was. Once I had enough of a mental barrier to make me aware of my spending habits, I suddenly felt like I was in control. Once I had a significant buffer built up in bills, and could start reliably skimming the extra into savings, all the financial stress also started to melt away. "It's okay. I've got a bit of a buffer if stuff goes wrong. _I can do this._ "

<comment><USER26> Carrying a debit card (at least by the american definition of "debit card", other countries may have more sane CC security) is a risk in itself -- if you lose the card (or just the number), then your bank account can be wiped out before you can stop it, then you'll start bouncing checks.

And since you have a card for each account, they can wipe out your savings too, making it harder to replenish your checking account.

You'll most likley get the money back, eventually.

I carry only an ATM card (PIN required), no debit card that debits directly from my bank account.

(note that this isn't just a hypothetical vulnerability, my company had to give a paycheck advance to an intern who lost her debit card in a bar, had her account wiped out and couldn't get money back from her bank in time to make rent)

<comment><USER27> Debit cards are quite secure, at least here, but we're many years ahead of the US when it comes to credit/debit cards.

The magnetic strip is never used(haven't been used the last 10 years, at least), a PIN is always required at PoS and for many issuers an electronic multistep authentication process is required to order anything online with the card.

And if something still where to go wrong then you'll get your money back.

<comment><USER26> _And if something still where to go wrong then you 'll get your money back._

Well... most of the time, unless the bank claims it was your fault because chip-and-pin is infallible... then you have to fight the bank for your money.

[https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-2215223/V...](https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-2215223/Victim- chip-pin-fraud-Its-YOUR-fault-insist-banks.html)

<comment><USER28> Interesting. Had atm fraud in brazil from my canadian chip and pin card. No issue getting the money back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> People rarely give the full picture of their situation in these articles.

What an amazing time we live in where with just a name you can track down people's LinkedIn, their general location, etc.

The couple in the article have just made financial decisions that are simply put, shitty.

I assumed both pairs didn't have anything sorted out until they were 30 and outside of extreme medical debt, gambling debt, etc couldn't find out how they're living pay to pay without sheer irresponsibility.

They're living in a place they can't afford. They need to get rid of their second car or work with the flexible schedule the SO has to drive him to work.

Lani needs to pick up another gig, she explains the work isn't consist, great, Uber the hours you're missing.

These articles remind me that we are our greatest enemy, not the situations we're put in but how we function in those situations.

<comment><USER30> "I assumed both pairs didn't have anything sorted out until they were 30"

I think it's the norm for people not to make much money in their 20s, particularly in southern California.

<comment><USER31> There is plenty of opportunity to make money in 20s though, so I can only blame a lack of research (assuming one knows how to read English and has access to the internet).

If you're smart, you can go the MD or STEM route and end up in tech or finance, or if you can get into a target law school that feed into well paying NYC/SF firms. If you can't do that, then electricians, plumbers, and mechanics make a decent amount starting very young. If you give up your 20s in SoCal, you better be doing something to hit the ground running fast with $150k+ pay.

However, if you sacrifice your 20s obtaining skills no one wants to pay for, then yes, you will not make much in your 20s.

<comment><USER30> "If you're smart, you can go the MD or STEM route and end up in tech or finance"

These typically entail large student loans, which make it difficult to save much in one's 20s.

"If you can't do that, then electricians, plumbers, and mechanics make a decent amount starting very young."

These are good options, but realistically there are only so many of these jobs to go around. They also require vocational training, which costs money, or the good fortune to obtain an apprenticeship.

"If you give up your 20s in SoCal, you better be doing something to hit the ground running fast with $150k+ "

Most people will never achieve that salary in their lifetime (speaking in real terms).

<comment><USER31> That's my point, if you're giving up your earnings in your 20s, you better end up an MD, or FAANG, or a high paying finance/law firms. If that isn't your trajectory, and you don't have a trust fund, then you should expect a tough cash flow situation, especially if you're accumulating debt, and giving up $50k+ per year for 8 years.

Unfortunately, I don't know the situation the trades are in from firsthand experience, but from the contractors I hire, they are constantly jacking up prices due to lack of licensed workers, so even if it's not sufficient pay to entice enough people to do the job at this moment, I would say the future looks good for them.

If that's not doable, then unfortunately SoCal, and CA in general, probably isn't an economical place to live in the long term. Just like living in Manhattan or London or SF is a luxury, so is a desirable location like CA.

Edit: I'm not saying this is ideal, but that is the advice I would give to someone at the start of their life deciding on whether or not to live in SoCal, even if they grew up there. Perhaps the situation will reverse once all the people who are willing to suffer through the living conditions that lower paid positions offer, but I don't see the situation bettering itself before that happens and the supply curve for labor shifts enough to force living wages.

<comment><USER32> You're probably talking about LA when referencing socal, but San Diego is reasonably affordable if you live in the right places (aka not downtown/la Jolla).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think housing costs are a big part of this. Things are almost perfectly stacked in favour of current property owners: oppose any new housing development near you which keeps land prices and rents high, while those wanting to buy or rent can't or don't vote and can't as easily encourage more building as current owners can discourage it.

And it's so simple (not easy, but simple) too: build more to reduce housing costs which is effectively a raise for most people. We'd need to stop treating housing as a primary investment vehicle though.

<comment><USER34> How many places does this really affect? I see people in California complaining about it constantly. It is certainly not a problem where I live.

Take a look at the NAR's housing affordability index[1]. Basically 100 means the median family income is exactly enough to quality for a mortgage on the median home price, higher is better. If you look at the HAI by metro area there are a very small number of places where the index is below 100, and almost all of them are in CA. The vast majority of cities seem to have reasonably affordable housing.

[1] [https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/housing- stat...](https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/housing- statistics/housing-affordability-index)

<comment><USER35> Is qualifying for a mortgage on a house really the same thing as affording it though?

<comment><USER34> Considering that the usual qualification for getting a mortgage is that payments can't exceed ~30% of your income, yes. They are at least not too far off from each other or tons of people would be defaulting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Check out this graph "The erosion of the minimum wage" from The Washington Post as well:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DvbrUVCVsAM25XX.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DvbrUVCVsAM25XX.jpg)

You need to do 47 hours of minimum wage work today to get the same amount of purchasing power as 40 hours of work in 2009.

<comment><USER37> That's interesting. Related to the erosion of minimum wage, my brother's mom, when she was around late teens or early twenties (so, around 40 years ago), was able to rent a beach view place in Newport CA with her friend. They both worked part time at Burger King. There is no way that could happen today

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> 2016 was probably the worst year of my life, and not for just political reasons.

I had gotten to a point where I had been living paycheck-to-paycheck for about two years, and the company I worked for went bankrupt due to the CEO running away with all of the money that was supposed to be used for our paychecks (yes, really), leaving me jobless and broke.

I wasn't good at saving money, and I got debt collectors coming for back credit card debt, and a lawsuit from my landlord because I wasn't able to pay the rent, all culminating with me bursting into tears at the airport because I realized I didn't have enough credit left on any of my cards to pay for the hotel pre-bill for the interview I was flying to at Amazon.

Fortunately I was able to find another job, and my wife and I set some ground rules about saving money and paying off debts, and since then I've been able to save enough money to have a down payment on a house, and even though I still use credit cards, I treat them like glorified debit cards, and rarely keep the balance higher than $200.

=====

It's easy to get into an unmanageable cycle of debt when you live paycheck to paycheck; fortunately this happened early enough in my life to where I was able to learn my lessons early enough to keep a buffer of money in case the worst happens. I feel bad for people when this stuff happens, since I wouldn't wish that level of depression on anyone.

</comment><comment><USER39> If I took a job at a unprofitable startup that was VC backed, I would understand the risks and ask for the appropriate compensation and have a larger cushion than normal. On the other hand, the only reason for working at a government job is short term stability - you "know" the federal government has access to capital to pay you and the long term stability of pensions, lifetime healthcare etc.

But now, on the federal level, you have a president who is shutting down the government over a $5 billion dollar "wall" that everyone in the know is saying won't be effective - including John Kelley. On the state level, pensions are in danger because of politics, the voters, and the unions.

On the bright(?) side, at least it seems like banks and credit unions are willing to work with people who are affected by the shutdown. I'm sure they wouldn't be willing to work with someone who couldn't make a payment because a startup couldn't achieve "product market fit".

</comment><comment><USER40> "They work in big cities and rural towns. They've tried to save — but rent, child care, student loans and medical bills get in the way."

Yikes. I'm not exactly living paycheck to paycheck, but I can relate to this.

It's really funny - my wife and I make quite a bit of money - whatever twisted form of capitalism we currently live in has been designed in such a way to extract most of it away from us. One begins to wonder what the point of going to work and earning money is other than to line the pockets of corporations that have effectively taken ownership of our government.

<comment><USER41> It's human psychology. Below a certain level, your mind will simply talk itself into spending your available money to make you happy.

You don't need that car. A car half the price would have been plenty good enough. But you did it anyhow.

You don't need fancy breakfast cereal that costs twice what the generic stuff at Aldi costs.

You don't need all those electronics and toys. You don't need to eat out that much.

If you made less money, you'd do less of the above right until you simply couldn't afford any of it.

And you'd continue to be about as happy as with all that money, assuming you were still paying for the necessities.

I'm not trying to convince you to give up those fancy drinks. I'm just explaining that you _could_ choose to live more frugally without almost no repercussions, but you won't.

<comment><USER42> I decided in college that a 40 hr workweek wasn't the optimal amount for me. I've since learned that for white-collar jobs, employers really really want full-time employees[1]. My way around this was: consume as if I made ~half as much and take extended sabbaticals. The final piece in the puzzle was ACA exchanges, as I can now get stable (though expensive and high-deductible) health insurance while unemployed.

This obviously isn't a binary, but I've been consistently fascinated with the inability of the people I know (generally middle- to upper-middle class) to shift their consumption downwards to meet a goal. Not everyone wants as much leisure time as I do, but I know tons of people with all sorts of reasons they'd like to save more, and every one of them consumes more while making less than me (when I'm working). I used to think the issue was that I grew up without a lot of disposable income, but now I know people with similar backgrounds whose floor on consumption rises in lockstep with their income.

That is to say, I don't disagree with your analysis here, but for God's sake _why_ do people do it?

[1] Contracting is obviously possible, but it often constrains the type of work you can do.

<comment><USER19> Because there is a lot of things I would like to buy now that I have no money for?

My ideal doesn't change when my income rises, I'm just finally able to pay for the things I've wanted all along.

At least, that was true before. I guess I'm finally at a level where something remains for saving.

<comment><USER42> Well, obviously. If what you want to spend your marginal income on is more consumption, that's completely reasonable. There's no accounting for preferences. That's not what I, the article, or anyone else in this thread is talking about though.

Note that I'm also talking about a _floor_, not about discretionary income. What you consider "must-have basics" is different from what I would consider to be so, which is different from what a billionaire or a villager below the global poverty line would. To some degree this is normal, but the degree to which it gets in the way of the other goals of the people I'm talking about, I don't understand it.

I'm specifically talking about the many, _many_ friends of mine who have goals other than immediate consumption, and for whom immediate consumption is preventing those goals even when those other goals are higher-priority. Yes, I know revealed preferences are a thing, but in extremis the concept relies on a completely unrealistic Homo Economicus model of people. Hyperbolic discounting, innumeracy, an innate desire to keep up with the Joneses even when you disavow any such desire: these are all surely contributors, but I guess I'm surprised at the degree to which their sum skews consumption behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Not even 200 years ago, most people exchanged labor for food. Currency was not used, as you most likely lived on the farm you worked for.

There was no form of advancement to be seen, but also no rent, student loans, medical bills, child care etc.

There was also no Whole Foods or freedom of speech.

But how much farther have we really come in 2018? We have more things, but if you stop working, you will starve or go ill just as quickly as an Irish laborer in 1850.

<comment><USER44> Definitely true in america. In countries such as the netherlands, if you lose your job, you get up to 38 months of 70% salary, rent benefits, child care benefits, and of course your illness will still be treated.

<comment><USER43> In the USA, many states will allow you 50% income for 6 months, and potentially Medicaid for health treatment.

This isn't much, but I was speaking in more general terms of "what if someone permanently decides to stop work."

<comment><USER45> > But how much farther have we really come in 2018? We have more things, but > if you stop working, you will starve or go ill just as quickly as an Irish > laborer in 1850.

In the province of Canada that I live in, you get $650 - $800 a month as a single adult if you stop working and enter the system. You are allowed to work on the side and gain up to $200 extra a month.

If you managed to get in the social housing program, you also get housing that is capped at 25% of your income along with free electricity and water. Some also offer internet and tv at a reduced price.

For reference, my 4 rooms apartment's rent is 675$/month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> the trifecta of: student loan debt + mortgage debt + employer based health insurance, is clearly just a bundled and packaged form of indentured servitude.

<comment><USER47> The first and last yes absolutely, though aim a conservative Brit and how Americans reconcile themselves to your health insurance (or lack of it) system really baffles me.

Mortgages aren't as clear cut. Our mortgages have been the backbone of my family's current financial security. After all the idea is at the end you own your house. Interest only mortgages not so much of course and it requires that the house ends up being worth the cost, but I'm talking about the general case.

<comment><USER48> Student loan debt is also not nearly as burdensome for the borrower in the UK has in the United States.

The UK basically operates a graduate tax system [1].

[1] - [http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/28418590/understanding...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/28418590/understanding- student-loans-how-exactly-do-they-work)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> > "My husband is a Park Ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and > he had to sign his furlough papers," one woman tweeted. "We have a 4 yr. old > and a 4-month-old, and we don't know when his next check will come. Mortgage > is due, Christmas 2 days away."

Unpopular opinion. It's _really_ hard for me to feel bad for families that have or are expecting kids without consulting their financials first. I believe that one shouldn't have kids if they can't afford them or have more kids than they can afford, but saying this out loud is an easy way to make enemies.

<comment><USER50> I vaguely agree with that sentiment but I don't understand why you chose to bring it up in connection to a government employee not getting paid because of the government shutdown.

<comment><USER51> Unfortunately, it's because government shutdowns (not being paid on time for a period of a week to two weeks to maybe three weeks this time) are a regular occurrence that absolutely can and should be planned for by any potentially affected government employee.

<comment><USER19> How is this even legal? I don't think this happens in any other liberal democracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Living paycheck-to-paycheck can be representative of good choices being made (and I'd guess it is, in most cases).

Most people can't afford everything they optimally need while minimising their risk, and so have to manage this by optimising as much as they are able within their paycheck. People with limited resources are going to hit a barrier somewhere, and spending your income is often going to be the least bad barrier to hit.

<comment><USER53> > Most people can't afford everything they optimally need while minimising > their risk, and so have to manage this by optimising as much as they are > able within their paycheck.

Not being able to afford basic necessities-in the most wealthy nation in the world-indicates something being broken.

<comment><USER54> I think the point is that living paycheck isn't indicative of not being able to afford basic necessities. It is the desire to spend most of your income on more than what are actually basic necessities.

<comment><USER53> No, that's absurd, and with the trend of depressed wages and increases in rent over the past few decades, workers wages are increasingly being stretched thin.

Moreover, I was responding to OP, specifically the conclusion I quoted and these two statements: > Living paycheck-to-paycheck can be representative of good choices being made (and I'd guess it is, in most cases).

and

> Most people can't afford everything they optimally need while minimising > their risk,

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Related required reading: [https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor- make-such-...](https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such- poor-decisions/179307480-39a74caf)

Before judging at the title, read the summary:

Our efforts to combat poverty are often based on a misconception: that the poor must pull themselves up out of the mire. But a revolutionary new theory looks at the cognitive effects of living in poverty. What does that relentless struggle to make ends meet do to people?

</comment><comment><USER56> Show us your incoming wage and outgoings then we can discuss whether you are living paycheck to paycheck. Living paycheck to paycheck means your needs are not being met rather than your wants. Cable (free OTA), eating out at all (pack sandwiches), heat (wear more clothing), etc, are all things which need to be cut if you think your outgoings are greater than income.

<comment><USER57> In many parts of the country, cutting heat is impossible. Disregarding the fact that it's nearly impossible to find enough clothing to stay warm long- term when the temperature drops below 20 degrees Fahrenheit or so, pipes will start to burst when the indoor temperature falls below freezing as well.

<comment><USER58> Sure, you can't just turn it off where I live. But reducing the temperature somewhat can have a larger than expected impact on heating cost, especially in homes with poor thermal resistance. Personally, I'd cut the cable TV first (and did).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Real estate is the way I broke this cycle. It was not a short term fix, it took 10 years. Living in and ultimately selling my condo and moving to an apartment netted me enough equity to pay off all my debts.

One year later, I've just finishing building a home, and have a 5-month emergency fund, and laugh at the idea of buying anything else at all on credit. A mortgage and nothing else.

I'd never have been able to do that paying all the monthly minimums on the debt I accrued in my 20s. It was money in, money out--money that was already spoken for.

<comment><USER19> That's entirely predicated on prices for real estate constantly rising, which is exactly what got us in this fix in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> We are mostly tech people here, right? Given that, I have a suggestion. We should all be smart, compensated well, etc.

If you worry about things like this, study what's been said by Warren Buffet, Jack Bogle, and Ray Dalio. These guys have won the game and explain clearly how anyone (yes anyone) can slowly accumulate wealth. It really does work.

The site Bogleheads.org is full of helpful ideas and people that will guide anyone that asks nicely.

This problem cannot be solved by politics, but rather by education. Happy (and prosperous) 2019 to all!

<comment><USER61> That's a few steps beyond someone who spends down their checking account each pay period (or runs deficits at times).

You have to have something to invest first.

Budgeting and/or landing a better job probably would come first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> There is a way out. Use cash.

My wife and I struggled with this, we do well and found our expenses increasing with our income.

Our solution was to take a small windfall (tax refund) to bootstrap two months of basic expenses, and dump money from direct deposit into a specific account. We did that to get current.

That eliminated many dopey expenses (Starbucks, shiny things in the grocery, etc). It's harder to spend money when it's in your hands. I have a no debit card policy, so we setup a dedicated credit card for things like gas that cash is onerous for.

<comment><USER63> This just sounds penny wise, pound foolish. Starbucks isn't breaking the bank, something larger is.

And your credit card policy hurts your family, to the tune of thousands of dollars every year.

<comment><USER64> Starbucks might not be breaking the bank, but it and the 10 other "not breaking the bank" habits all added together very well could be.

Also in order to same "thousands" every year, you either need to be spending a significant amount of money, or be carrying a significant amount of debt. Neither are strictly necessary. Avoiding it is a good plan for a lot of people.

<comment><USER63> The logic you just gave is the classic penny wise logic, but the reality is you can have as much Starbucks as you want if you stop buying more house or car or education than you actually need.

Fucking up big decisions is how Starbucks matters, and one of those fuck ups is to refuse to learn how to use a credit card.

People like to pretend constant denial of small pleasure is what makes a difference because martyrdom feels righteous, but the reality is it's a huge waste of energy, dollar-per-effort wise. It's not the smart way to live a thrifty life.

<comment><USER64> I basically agree with you, but if you stop buying more house or car than you actually need, then you aren't saving thousands a year from credit card use.

It's like any optimization problem, at different stages of it there is different low hanging fruit. Yes, if you have the big expenses figured out, you are in a pretty good place. But at that point, it is reasonable to consider whether you have some small bad habits that you might be better off without.

<comment><USER63> The exclusive fixation on "thousands" vs. "many hundreds" or "tens of thousands" is intellectually dishonest.

<comment><USER64> I disagree. Using credit cards for cash back is on the same order as going to Starbucks or not. Using them to build better credit is also a small-scale gain if you aren't taking on more debt than you can handle.

<comment><USER63> No it's not, by an order of magnitude, and no you don't need to take on debt to build credit, in fact that doesn't even work.

It just sounds like you also don't know how credit cards work...

<comment><USER64> Looks like you weren't the person who replied about using credit cards to build credit and get lower interest rates on loans. So that probably explains some of the disconnect here.

Cashback is definitely on the same order of magnitude as a Starbucks habit.

<comment><USER63> > Cashback is definitely on the same order of magnitude as a Starbucks habit.

False. Starbucks habit is $10/week, or $520/year. A 2% cashback card will return ~$2,000 annually for a family of 4 with a household income of ~$100,000 (the vast majority of HN users).

Please stop replying. Thanks.

<comment><USER64> Assuming your Starbucks habit is daily, you're looking at closer to $30/week, or $1500/year.

If you are making $100k a year, your take home pay is probably closer to $70k. Assuming you are financially responsible and saving a decent amount, that means you are spending generously maybe $50k/ year. At 2% cash back, that comes out to $1000/year.

Same order of magnitude.

<comment><USER63> Your numbers are completely wrong, and you are engaging dishonestly, which is in violation of the HN guidelines. _Please_ stop responding to me, you're ruining this discussion.

<comment><USER64> Sorry I hurt your ego.

Those numbers are completely reasonable, and anyone who took half a second to go over them would agree.

Further, at this point the post is old enough that no one besides us is likely to read it. No discussion is being ruined.

I have been engaging in good faith. I have to conclude that you haven't been.

You can reply again to have the last word if that will make you feel better.

<comment><USER63> You have not been engaging in good faith, and your continued replies are further evidence of your lack of respect for me or the conversation I'm trying to have with others.

My ego is irrelevant, you are objectively wrong and _also_ not using HN as it is intended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone mentioning Dave Ramsey. His podcasts, his youtube videos.

If you are living paycheck to paycheck, he is a great resource. It's very easy to fall into the consumerism trap in the US. Plenty of people have iPhone, iPads, Macbooks, seem to travel a lot, student debt, car loans, go to concerts go eat out daily, etc... If you make 100k, or 200k or 300k, you feel you are "rich", you don't need a budget, you don't need to keep track of every dollar, you don't need a plan, a 2% car loan interest is fine, the S&P500 gives you a return of 10% anyways... But Dave Ramsey stirs people in the right direction. At first you will probably curse him because he goes head on against simple math. But his teachings are great, they push you into making actual progress and not postponing efforts. I think someone making 60k and following what he teachers can easily become a millionaire.

</comment><comment><USER66> [https://outline.com/duWzgx](https://outline.com/duWzgx)

</comment><comment><USER67> I spent most of my life trying to be sure I didn't end up that way. It's a choice. It's not easy if you had no parental help, guidance or financial backing. But that was me. I have done it, mostly through sheer personality (persistence) and just-enough IQ points to put ideas into action. Some people would say it's because of the color of my skin, which I assure you no one gave a damn about when I've been interviewing nonstop for 6 months straight, 3-4 times a week (roughly half of those a 30minute-1hour commute across the city on public transportation), and getting some rather rude rejections. Many people wouldn't even do it, unless it was on a platter for them. They accept less, what's easy.

I've seen poor people, the middle class and wealthy alike end up living check to check. As my Depression-era grandmother always said, it's not what you earn, it's what you save. There's many ways to do that. You can work more, find a way to earn more while you do work, or spend less. I do all three to ensure I remain in the middle class, with a growing savings account.

Most people have fanciful dreams they never achieve, shooting a little high for their talents. My most important career goal has been to not make Walmart greeter my retirement plan. I'm doing everything I can. Tomorrow morning in effort to prevent that, I'm maxing out my yearly contribution to my Roth IRA, which I opened up alongside my 401K/rollover traditional IRA. So what was I doing before I saw this story show up on my Firefox Livemarks? Working on a SQL query, while my wife is out eating burgers with her mom. It requires dedication to stay afloat.

I know there's a lot of people here just like me. While I started on a Commodore128 and it's my passion (I know of many ways to make money, much easier), many people in this field found it because they simply wanted to improve their lives, which I admire. There's also some that didn't really earn their positions, carefully crafted and placed by their loving parents, and will have a lot of issue with my story, not fully understanding that it has been done and can be done from the bottom.

Most of us are dealt a mediocre hand. I remain steadfast in that living paycheck to paycheck is ultimately a choice. A poor one at that.

</comment><comment><USER68> I was getting paid 150k a year and living paycheck to paycheck...

Depression, debt and "education" can really blind you. Add in a gf/wife who can't budget for anything, sick family members and some bad luck...

</comment><comment><USER69> Now I'm talking from an Eastern European perspective, but this writing is pretty one-sided with people working in (liberal) arts fields with 4 kids. HVAC repair folks, plumbers, electrical repairmen have as much an income as a software developer here.

So go get a blue collar job, if your libarts degree isn't paying for it. Welding pays well, sure it's dirty, sure it's hard, but there is zero competition in these fields.

</comment><comment><USER10> Something has been seriously wrong with the U.S. savings rate over the last 3-4 decades: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT)

You would see by the graph that maybe we started to learn something after the 2008 meltdown, but nope - trend reverses again in 2012 or so.

</comment><comment><USER70> I am in my forties and barely know the basics of finance. I have a checking account that gets deposited with my salary and pay my bills. Does someone know of resources that have sound financial advice. Few years back I had to borrow money to pay rent.

</comment><comment><USER71> I think UBI that promotes self-actualization in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) is the solution

</comment><comment><USER72> There is astonishingly little actual data in this article. The only non- anecdotal justification of the headline is from a study that received its own article when it was originally published quite a while ago.

Makes me wonder why WaPo decided this article needed to be published.

</comment><comment><USER27> Living paycheck to paycheck is common most places in the world. It's definetly a choice a lot of people make.

</comment><comment><USER73> In all of these, nowhere does it state the biggest expense: taxes.

</comment><comment><USER74> A college economics professor would say that this is behavior at the optimal consumer utility boundary.

</comment><comment><USER75> We can address huge swathes of this by linking immigration law with unemployment numbers. That way companies are not allowed to simply demand unrealistic exorbitant qualifications for open positions and they would be more willing to increase wages and considering hiring and training people in deficient areas.

</comment><comment><USER76> For the majority of Americans the simple fix is to spend less than you make and stop acquiring debt to impress people you don't like.

Cost of living and wages, of course, are factors to consider, but relocation to a more affordable area is an option for many. It's a matter of going through with it.

<comment><USER19> Not all of us want to leave the place we grew up in and all our friends behind just because a bunch of juppies have decided to move in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> From the executive summary of the Federal Reserve report linked in the article:

>When asked about their finances, 74 percent of adults said they were either doing okay or living comfortably in 2017—over 10 percentage points more than in the first survey in 2013.

>Individuals of all education levels have shared in the improvement over the past five years, though the more educated still report greater well-being than those less educated.

>Three in five urban residents describe the economy in their local community as good or excellent ver- sus two in five rural residents who offer this posi- tive of an assessment of local conditions.

Etc. Far less bleak when one focuses on the whole picture. But don't let that stop wapo et al. from implicating Trump while trotting out predictable sob stories about people who spent half their lives pursuing 3 uneconomical degrees, had 3 more kids than they could afford, in cities with some of the highest costs of living in the world, and now complain that they're living paycheck to paycheck.

I'm getting really tired of the agenda based fear mongering by wapo, huffpo, and the like. Trust in media is rightly at an all time low[1].

1.[https://medium.com/trust-media-and-democracy/10-reasons- why-...](https://medium.com/trust-media-and-democracy/10-reasons-why- americans-dont-trust-the-media-d0630c125b9e)

<comment><USER78> > sob stories about people who spent half their lives pursuing 3 uneconomical > degrees, had 3 more kids than they could afford, in cities with some of the > highest costs of living in the world, and now complain that they're living > paycheck to paycheck.

So the person who ....

\- never attended any sort of college, but did graduate high school

\- is single and childless, in fact have no family at all as their parents died poor and young

\- is living paycheck to paycheck, whether in a city or rural area

...just doesn't exist? And if they do exist, please enlighten me on what steps they should take to correct their situation?

Just curious, but are your parents college educated?</comment></comment>


Apple Streaming (HLS) supports fragmented MP4, offline playback and offline DRM - <AUTHOR> https://bitmovin.com/hls-news-wwdc-2016/ <comment><USER2> the great thing is that also apple moves now to broadly accepted open standards, which are also compatible to the HTML5 Media Source Extensions, HbbTV, ATSC3.0, etc.</comment>


To all those guys who took the conservative banking jobs - <AUTHOR> http://sampurtill.com/post/50353347/those-guys-who-took-those-conservative-banking-jobs

<comment><USER2> 1) Jobs are investment banks and asset management are not risk free and not conservative. There is almost zero job security and - as seen - you won't know you were fired until the day you are. With small startups CEOs will communicate things much better and you can usually see things coming. Case in point, Lehman UK had a fairly succesful business, however all their cash was pooled in Lehman US. So on Sunday they got a call that their cash was no longer available, so they had to put a profitable business in administration.

2) They are not risk free, because your bonus depends on your performance (not in all segments, but in many your performance is directly measurable in money). No one cares about salary - it's all about the bonus.

3) You do gain a broad skill set working in finance. It probably looks very narrow and simple from outside, just like programming would look to a non- programmer.

4) On one hand, in a startup you create something tangible and in finance you are just a glorified broker. On the other hand, startup valuation is very chaotic and many startups would not exist if there were no bubbles. In finance it is very clear what you and your company are paid for and how much it costs.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I don't think any of my friends considered their jobs "predictable and secure" when they started. And in many cases the huge bonuses they received last year wil cushion the fall. Let's just hope they haven't become to accustomed to a certain lifestyle.

<comment><USER4> _Let's just hope they haven't become to accustomed to a certain lifestyle._

We're _all_ accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and most folks fall on tougher times at least once or twice in life, and have to downgrade their spending. I'm not suggesting folks here are a couple of paychecks away from being homeless, as I assume we're all of at least average intelligence and have some savings, good health insurance, and don't consider debt a fun hobby...just that we're all pretty spoiled, and we all probably have some expenses we wouldn't hang on to if our own personal revenue took a dramatic turn south.

But, I agree. I hope that folks who work in volatile industries (like finance, or our very own home turf, technology, to give another example) are thinking ahead when times are good, and have an understanding that times will not always be good. (You guys who missed the first bubble know that, right? We will see another crash in tech. Don't imagine human nature is so dramatically different this time around, or that enough of the folks who experienced the first one are still around and taking part to impart wisdom to prevent it from happening again. It'll look different, because it won't be played out in the public markets, and the names will mostly be different...but it'll come, and not every high flying Web 2.0 company will survive it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This guy is really ignorant. It's the same mentality that thinks the valley is impervious to bubbles and inflation.

What? Really, "you get the satisfaction of knowing you aren't a complete tool bag every time you wake up in the morning."... They may have lost their jobs, but you lose at life.

<comment><USER6> Just to be fair, however, he's young. I think most of us have been there. We've taken the path less trodden (self employment, working at a startup, etc.) and we've had doubts. In order to counteract those doubts, we need to act as if the "other way" is stupid, that we're better, and that we're doing the right thing.

I think that's what this guy is doing. He's young, he's confident (to a point), but he lacks the wisdom and ability to reflect that comes with age.

So while it's easy to call him "ignorant", a "douche bag", or whatever - he's not willingly being any of those things. He's young, cocky, and exuberant - like most of us were.

 _(Of course, when /we/ were acting the same way, we were probably getting called out the same way too.. so this process might actually be necessary to develop that wisdom ;-))_

<comment><USER7> _I think that's what this guy is doing. He's young, he's confident (to a point), but he lacks the wisdom and ability to reflect that comes with age._

All of the things you mention occurred to me by the time I was 19. There's a difference between young people who are sprinkling their brains with alkaloids[2] at raves and the young people that are sprinkling their brains with DHA, creatine, and glutamine.

I also realize that there's a delicate balance I have to reach with regard to confidence. It's not easy to reach this balance, because on the one hand, young people are treated like second-class citizens (in some circumstances), but on the other, you need to have a lot of balls to do a startup, to charge what you sholud be charging, and claim the work you do is as good as that of an older adult's. This is especially true because claiming you are equal is taken to mean arrogance, even though the evidence for the alleged inferiority of the young is lacking. In objective contests like chess, war, athletics, hacking, and mathematics, there are many very proficient people who are very young.[1] This is not the case in established corporations, politics, or the job market. Finally, people always want to feel superior to others, and while they can't express this desire for superiority by being racist or sexist, they can do so by discriminating based on age.

Sometimes behavior that is acceptable in a male 50-year-old CEO is considered unacceptable in a female of the same age or a young guy (there was a Harvard Business School study that showed something to this effect; it was a case study of a CEO that has to make certain decisions. The male was considered to be "tough but fair" or something, while the woman was considered a bitch. The case studies were identical but for the gender of the protagonist). So, would you say he's being arrogant if he were 50?

Now, is Sam being a douche? I don't know, but I do know not all young people are the same.

[1] Fidel Castro, Alexander the Great, Octavian, Bobby Fischer, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Woz, most athletes (for many reasons), Reimann, etc.

[2] NB: I'm not talking about caffeine or ritalin.

Edit: I didn't mean to get on your case, petercooper; you seemed to have said things in good faith. I guess you touched a nerve...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _you get the satisfaction of knowing you aren't a complete tool bag every time you wake up in the morning._

whilst everyone reading your blog has the exact opposite impression...

<comment><USER9> Yep. This is too bad, because he makes a few good points amidst the train wreck comments like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > (not sure how this works when a bubble bursts, haven't been around long > enough).

Well, after the last .com bubble burst, there was a lot less ping-pong with the CEO, and a lot more "You want fries with that" going on, as I understood it.

</comment><comment><USER11> " _p.s. does it annoy you that i don't capitalize any of my letters on here?_ "

Yes, yes it does. Unless you're a cockroach who can't work the shift key:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_and_Mehitabel>

</comment><comment><USER12> The shift key really doesn't take that long to depress, I'm not sure how not using saves you time.

I had the same realization, that I had better job security at a startup, when I revisited some people I left at uni doing postdocs.

<comment><USER13> Job security for postdocs? I've never heard of a postdoc losing their job.

Sure, you might be only funded for a year at a time, but at least the money runs out on a predetermined date rather than unexpectedly one Friday.

Maybe my experiences are just limited, though.

<comment><USER14> Problem is, it takes a lot longer to find work as a post-doc than as a programmer. The money may run out on predictable, yearly intervals, but what do you do once it's gone? Get a faculty position? (Because we all know _that's_ easy.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Of all the career paths that I know of, finance and technology are the two that probably hold the greatest appeal to me. I might have gone into finance when I was younger but it just wasn't on my radar.

As others have commented, there are far more similarities (between finance careers and the startup world) than there are differences. Some of my closest friends are investment bankers and portfolio managers. They have a deep interest in the world around them, are wicked smart and do what they do because it gets them juiced like nothing else.

I'm definitely not wicked smart but the other two characteristics apply to me so I can relate to their chosen path and don't revel in the sh*t that's hitting the fan right now.

</comment><comment><USER16> I didn't sit back, and chuckle when I saw 20,000 people potentially lose their jobs. Even if you don't like Wall Street, you don't want to see that many people looking for work all of a sudden.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. They have families and kids and rent. When half your friends are living and working in NYC...this has been a really rough week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is no such thing as a conservative banking job at these companies. All of these firms have strongly cyclical business, resulting in aggressive hiring and regular layoffs, and think nothing of canning an entire department if they don't need it any more. Also, at higher levels, the odds of being sacked out of the blue for political reasons increase greatly (e.g. new VP arrives, fires the next tier of management and brings his friends from his last company). Also, if you work in IT you risk being made the scapegoat for some failure outside your control (note the rating agencies trying to blame the subprime crisis on bugs in their ratings code). And if you do get canned, it's merciless - I've seen it happen to people on holiday, people who have just signed mortgages, and so on. These people are escorted from the building by security and then forgotten. You also have to contend with the risk of burnout, one of the reasons why there are relatively few employees above the age of 30.

You have to do exceptionally well to receive the grand salaries and bonuses, as these are heavily skewed towards the minority of top-ranked employees. Plus, for every 'master of the universe' there are 10 people in compliance, legal, audit, helpdesk, facilities, hr, IT, back office, etc slaving away.

Going into wall st is an aggressive career choice.

</comment><comment><USER19> 1) Can't even spell Merrill

2) Banks wash people out. You think everyone who starts at one ends up on top?

<comment><AUTHOR> merryl = substr('merrill', 0, 4) . strrev(substr('lynch', 0, 2))

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are you guys not paying attention or what? The financial industry is NOT going under. It's doing fine. It's doing what coders would call a refactoring, and it is nowhere near to collapse. And the developers at those industries are certainly not getting laid off. Don't react based off 24pt headlines, first think about the real situation.

And YouNoodle is a slimey business. It may be successful, it may make a lot of money, but I still don't like this parasite businesses who contribute nothing of real value, and get created solely by marketing gimicks.

And a word to Sam: lay off the uppity behaviour till you have had a down. Nobody wants to watch a move where things just go up all the time, it's the middle of the movie, where the hero is doing wretchedly that is the heart of the story.

</comment><comment><USER21> This guy sounds like a tool bag.

</comment><comment><USER22> does this guy really that the economy tanking is somehow any better for startups than it is for bankers?

<comment><USER17> I can't speak for Sam, but right now I'm really really glad I left my finance job to do a startup.

<comment><USER14> Well of course you are -- right now. But what happens when the finance shock ripples through the rest of the economy, and tech investments dry up? Or when tech purchases stop? Or when job losses in banking, real estate, construction and sales (coupled with high energy costs) lead to overall drops in consumption, which in turn leads to drops in advertising budgets?

It's still _way_ too early to be whistling past the graveyard.

<comment><USER17> For me personally I have a couple side business so I'd be OK.

But even if our startup whittled and died tomorrow; I've acquired more skills in 3 months working at ticketbumblerstumbler than I did in two years working at my old job.

Our burn rate is less than 3k a month; we're not whistling past anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Oooh... this is just asking for bad karma for your start-up. Fire him, he's bad luck!

</comment><comment><USER24> "you can sell your soul to an enormous investment firm and they, in turn, will make you rich with not very much risk involved"

This has merit.

Most of the world is chasing a dollar, if not for survival then in the pursuit of a decent, good or great life. Glory and vanity plays a large part especially for high net-worth individuals. Fear too, for attaining some type of status amongst one's peers. Startups are no different in that respect. But, 'Selling your soul' is more likely to occur on Wall Street. If you want your soul, then 'do the right thing.'

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm not a wall street hater, but it's not hard to understand why people feel a little tinge of poetic justice about LEH el. al. -

[http://www.google.com/search?q=announces+layoffs+stock+price...](http://www.google.com/search?q=announces+layoffs+stock+price+up)

I know that this is bogus on so many levels but I'm just saying that the perception is that foreign competition puts pressure on companies to layoff and offshore and then wall street is in the bleachers going wild when layoffs are announced.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> after hearing feedback from everyone on hacker news and other places, i've decided to pull this post as it was misinformed and inflammatory. sorry if i made you mad!

<comment><USER24> It wasn't that bad. I liked it because it was genuine. It's like being at uni and seeing all the kids taking corporate finance with $ signs in their eyes, impervious to their surroundings, as though nothing else mattered anymore, they'd found their raison d'être and were busy submitting those graduate applications to every corporate finance firm possible. Such individuals are the ones you probably were thinking about in your post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Any chance we get an enlightened rewrite of the article that will serve to correct misconceptions that all startupers can't distinguish between finance and banking. It won't make me love my banker anymore today. He's sitting on his fat ass conservative banking job riding the credit crunch!!

</comment><comment><USER27> Lehman bros: 150 years. Startups: ???

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this guy's startup profitable or is it dependent on that superfluous 'investment capital' stuff?

</comment><comment><USER29> Other than the chortling about people losing jobs, I agree with this guy.

Finance and portfolio folk really create little.

They are gamblers in the basic sense: their highest goal is gaining as much as possible in return for as little as possible - the cheapest, easiest way.

It is a curious thing that as many of us grow, the less interested we are in that mindset. Our eyes start to open to the costliest, hardest way.

It's not to be found in investment banking, finance, and the market any more than it is playing the lottery.</comment>


I contribute to the Windows kernel. We are slower than other OSes. Here is why - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-we-are-slower-than-other-oper/ <comment><USER2> This needs a [2013].</comment>


Introducing Coindex – Cryptocurrency price tracking on iOS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jashpetty/introducing-coindex-cryptocurrency-price-tracking-on-ios-3d3cc24217f4 <comment><USER2> A Good UX is badly needed in the space!! Thanks</comment>


Bulgaria to introduce chip in its ID card. With biometrics - <AUTHOR> Yesterday the Bulgarian government published a draft proposal for introducing a chip in the ID card. In summary, the changes include:
- e-id certificate (citizens can request not to have one) - qualified electronic signature (citizen can opt-in for that) - biometric data (opt-in at this point, but there's always a risk of someone flipping a word and making it mandatory) according to ICAO standards - e-id and QES in passports and residence permits. - option to request renewal using e-id or QES
Most of the things are fine from privacy perspective - you can always revoke your certificate, and the law prohibits gathering data about devices and locations from which the ID card is used for e-identification. But the biometric part is what I'm concerned about.
Is there really any technical and security reason for that? The usual claim that "biometric passports make us safer" needs some explanation. From what I know, the ICAO standards are broken, and the fingerprints stored in the contactless chip are not just a mere hash - it's a picture of the fingerprint.
Some people claim that forging documents is impossible with biometrics, but to me that's not true, and furthermore nobody checks the fingerprints.
What do you think? <comment><USER2> In some sense, it is safer to have them on your passport than having them in a database somewhere. Yes, someone can steal or 'borrow' your passport, but that gets them only data from one person. A database, when cracked, will give you data from millions.

And I haven't checked, by it is safe to assume that this follows [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport#European_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport#European_Union)

<comment><AUTHOR> The passports are required to have it. ID cards aren't. My question is mostly whether the biometrics help in any way to secure passports/id cards?</comment></comment>


Increased risk of narcolepsy in children and adults after vaccine - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23884811 <comment><USER2> Even if this holds up to scrutiny H1N1 will still be A LOT more dangerous than the vaccination.

<comment><USER3> According to Wikipedia, 4% of young H1N1 infectees are hospitalized and only 5% of those die. The study found that the vaccination increased risk of narcolepsy in children by factor of 6.5. Baseline prevalence of narcolepsy is one in 3,000.[1] So even assuming certain infection with the flu, chance of getting narcolepsy from the vaccination is on par with dying from the flu.

The problem with this vaccination was that it was rushed to the market in the flu pandemia scare without proper trials.

[1]: [http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/narcolepsy/detail_narcole...](http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/narcolepsy/detail_narcolepsy.htm)

<comment><USER4> If you had to choose between narcolepsy and death, which would you pick?

<comment><USER3> My point is that your best chance of getting _neither_ narcolepsy or death by flu was by not taking this shot.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Timestamps in Message-Passing Systems That Preserve Partial Ordering (1988) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs426/2012/lab/bib/fidge88timestamps.pdf

<comment><USER2> As part of the DARPA NMRD project, we hired two Yale computer science professeurs to write Isis, a message delivery system that provided virtual synchrony: messages were delivered in order. This software was put in the public domain and I used it a few years later when I was tech lead on a fraud detection system for PacBell.

Good stuff!</comment>


FBI created fake Seattle Times Web page to nab bomb-threat suspect - <AUTHOR> http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024888170_fbinewspaper1xml.html#.VFBh0zyIc_s.twitter

<comment><USER2> That doesn't sound like any spy ware or virus, Just got someone to click a link and logged the ip which connected to the server.</comment>


Wave-Based Turing Machine: Time Reversal and Information Erasing [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://blog.espci.fr/efort/files/2016/07/Turing.pdf <comment><USER2> I (semi-seriously) expected to see the fictional "L. P. Waterhouse" listed as an author of this paper.

Edit: relevant passage from _Cryptonomicon_ :

The sand at the surf line has been washed flat. A small child's footprints wander across it, splaying like gardenia blossoms on thin shafts. The sand looks like a geometric plane until a sheet of ocean grazes it. Then small imperfections are betrayed by swirls in the water. Those swirls in turn carve the sand. The ocean is a Turing machine, the sand is its tape; the water reads the marks in the sand and sometimes erases them and some times carves new ones with tiny currents that are themselves a response to the marks. Plodding through the surf, Waterhouse strikes deep craters in the wet sand that are read by the ocean. Eventually the ocean erases them, but in the process its state has been changed, the pattern of its swirls has been altered. Waterhouse imagines that the disturbance might somehow propagate across the Pacific and into some super-secret Nipponese surveillance device made of bamboo tubes and chrysanthemum leaves; Nip listeners would know that Waterhouse had walked that way. In turn, the water swirling around Waterhouse's feet carries information about Nip propeller design and the deployment of their fleets—if only he had the wit to read it. The chaos of the waves, gravid with encrypted data, mocks him.

<comment><USER3> I had a hard time figuring what is the paper about until I read this comment. Kinda helpful. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is remarkable. This paper has a high probability of being called "the watershed mark" in 30 years...

<comment><USER5> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is an accompanying video here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lqiZqmS- bY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lqiZqmS-bY)

</comment><comment><USER7> Read his blog, there's an article about shifing the propagation medium to reverse a 2d Wave. Splendid.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can someone please explain this to me in layman's terms?

<comment><USER6> Here's a description taken from Alyssa M. Adams' blog ([http://www.curiosityspaces.com/computation/](http://www.curiosityspaces.com/computation/)):

> Droplets bouncing around on a surface is apparently a great way to think > about quantum mechanics, or at least some system with a wave encoding > information about a discrete object. Here's a nice video showing how a > bouncing particle on a liquid surface has a chaotic trajectory. The > probability distribution of that particle's position ends up being something > like the most unstable mode of the boundaries for the particle. But this > paper shows that the droplet's trajectory can be totally reversed, even > though the trajectory is chaotic. This is because the droplet's trajectory > is completely encoded in the resonating wave it's riding. In other words, > the system totally remembers what the droplet is doing and that memory can > be accessed and then totally reversed. A great physical (well, MORE physical > than usual) example of what memory is.</comment></comment>


Study Reaffirms the Massive Impact Netflix Is Having on Pay TV - <AUTHOR> https://bgr.com/2015/06/30/netflix-cord-cutting-study-pay-tv-impact/

<comment><AUTHOR> I am negotiating with my wife to cut out cable TV. Except for Turner Movie Classics, which she likes, just about everything else is available streaming, or renting.</comment>