Shifting_Gears
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- Sep 13, 2018
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Ladies, gents. I come here to leave a rant of frustration. Your results may vary, but this is my point of view from someone in their mid 30's.
I graduated college not too long after the great recession of 08/09. As it was sold to me, college would get me prepared and IN to a great paying job that would lead me to living the dream. Home ownership, no worries about money, stability, blah blah blah. The job market was less than stellar (try total shit) when I graduated. Up to that point, I had worked for my family's business. I wanted to break out from that instead of continue on, as I was already burnt and wanting to try something else.
I ended up at an entry level, commission based job at the company I am still with. I sucked and almost got canned, but someone saw potential and offered me an admin related job. When I took that, I paced myself to learn new skills and work my way up from associate to supervisor, supervisor into a management role which is where I currently am. Within the period of my management role, I have been able to make some really solid growth. Which is great. It got me to a new state, presented new challenges and overall, I like my job. I am responsible for a large territory and I have met some great people. I get to travel periodically to some pretty beautiful places and experience new cultures as part of my job.
However, I feel like I am running a race uphill with a sprained ankle in a blizzard. My financial "coming up" has basically aligned with the insanity that started in 2019 with COVID. In early 2020, I didn't know if I would have a job. I had to lay off numerous people within the first 6 months of the pandemic and every day I wondered if my name was on that list. Would I be getting a phone call? That was always a sinking feeling until things smoothed out and I was still around.
I feel like this. COVID tripped a reset button for the country in a bad way. The govt fed people money, which at first was necessary for many to carry forward. However, I feel that it really speaks to the fact that so much of our country is enslaved to debt, consumerism, not saving, etc. that it was needed to simply keep the economy afloat (but it failed, look at how many people lost jobs and the length of recovery). Yes, I understand this was the point as many people lost their jobs, but many of those people didn't have any reserves to keep things afloat during tough times.
So did some people use the assistance to keep the lights on and bills paid? Sure. But many also used it to buy stupid shit. Why not? Rent was getting paid through additional assistance funds and hell, if it wasn't, you couldn't get evicted. There were "free" everything programs, etc. It just made people more dependent on govt assistance and started this pseudo-stability that caused everyone to load up on shit that's not important and become an even shittier society of people. What's even worse is the fact that many large corporations took business loan funding and prevented smaller, individually owned businesses from staying afloat. For what, securing a minimal blow to the bottom line? Funny how there weren't more strict policies to prevent that.
So now that everyone is loaded with COVID bucks (especially families with kids), prices start to go up. I think we really saw it first with cars, via the "great chip shortage". So now everyone has govt bucks to pay $10k, $15k, $20k over actual value for a used car. Used cars are in, new cars are for people that have patience and can wait out getting what they want. Used cars skyrocket due to "supply and demand". However, there's still plenty of used car supply and prices aren't really leveling. Welcome to the new norm.
Then comes real-estate. How is it that the biggest real estate boom (craze, more-so) happens post-pandemic and home values are doubling + over the period of a year and a half? The area I am in is literally unobtainable for me to purchase a home. I'm a first time home buyer, so even if I found a place that qualified for an FHA loan, I can't compete with cash buyers that are paying way over asking price. I would have to settle for getting into a mortgage on a property that's hyper-inflated compared to its actual value or wait out this madness. If I'm lucky, maybe a nice condo... but wait, HOA fees are out of control as well.
Which brings the next thorn. Rent. Just got served with a 30% rent hike come our renewal. Our renewal is nearly $2k/mo for a 1BR apartment. What the flying F. It's a nice community, but damn. It's a 1BR, not on the water, not near a city, etc. The whole area is rising like that. It's absolutely in-F'ing-sane.
Then let's throw the Russia/Ukraine conflict on top and get bent on oil prices just to sweeten the mix.
Finally, people. Wow. Who knew we would become such disrespectful, de-moralized idiots toward each-other? This has really, really caused people's true colors to come out. Being cooped up, financial hardship, a bleak uncertainty of the future to come, major political polarization, health polarization, all of this insane "woke" cultural shift, the general inability to disconnect from media/social media, etc has just procured the perfect recipe for a social-economic meltdown.
At this point, I feel like everything I have busted my ass to achieved is being erased day-by-day by things way out of my control. Rant over.
I graduated college not too long after the great recession of 08/09. As it was sold to me, college would get me prepared and IN to a great paying job that would lead me to living the dream. Home ownership, no worries about money, stability, blah blah blah. The job market was less than stellar (try total shit) when I graduated. Up to that point, I had worked for my family's business. I wanted to break out from that instead of continue on, as I was already burnt and wanting to try something else.
I ended up at an entry level, commission based job at the company I am still with. I sucked and almost got canned, but someone saw potential and offered me an admin related job. When I took that, I paced myself to learn new skills and work my way up from associate to supervisor, supervisor into a management role which is where I currently am. Within the period of my management role, I have been able to make some really solid growth. Which is great. It got me to a new state, presented new challenges and overall, I like my job. I am responsible for a large territory and I have met some great people. I get to travel periodically to some pretty beautiful places and experience new cultures as part of my job.
However, I feel like I am running a race uphill with a sprained ankle in a blizzard. My financial "coming up" has basically aligned with the insanity that started in 2019 with COVID. In early 2020, I didn't know if I would have a job. I had to lay off numerous people within the first 6 months of the pandemic and every day I wondered if my name was on that list. Would I be getting a phone call? That was always a sinking feeling until things smoothed out and I was still around.
I feel like this. COVID tripped a reset button for the country in a bad way. The govt fed people money, which at first was necessary for many to carry forward. However, I feel that it really speaks to the fact that so much of our country is enslaved to debt, consumerism, not saving, etc. that it was needed to simply keep the economy afloat (but it failed, look at how many people lost jobs and the length of recovery). Yes, I understand this was the point as many people lost their jobs, but many of those people didn't have any reserves to keep things afloat during tough times.
So did some people use the assistance to keep the lights on and bills paid? Sure. But many also used it to buy stupid shit. Why not? Rent was getting paid through additional assistance funds and hell, if it wasn't, you couldn't get evicted. There were "free" everything programs, etc. It just made people more dependent on govt assistance and started this pseudo-stability that caused everyone to load up on shit that's not important and become an even shittier society of people. What's even worse is the fact that many large corporations took business loan funding and prevented smaller, individually owned businesses from staying afloat. For what, securing a minimal blow to the bottom line? Funny how there weren't more strict policies to prevent that.
So now that everyone is loaded with COVID bucks (especially families with kids), prices start to go up. I think we really saw it first with cars, via the "great chip shortage". So now everyone has govt bucks to pay $10k, $15k, $20k over actual value for a used car. Used cars are in, new cars are for people that have patience and can wait out getting what they want. Used cars skyrocket due to "supply and demand". However, there's still plenty of used car supply and prices aren't really leveling. Welcome to the new norm.
Then comes real-estate. How is it that the biggest real estate boom (craze, more-so) happens post-pandemic and home values are doubling + over the period of a year and a half? The area I am in is literally unobtainable for me to purchase a home. I'm a first time home buyer, so even if I found a place that qualified for an FHA loan, I can't compete with cash buyers that are paying way over asking price. I would have to settle for getting into a mortgage on a property that's hyper-inflated compared to its actual value or wait out this madness. If I'm lucky, maybe a nice condo... but wait, HOA fees are out of control as well.
Which brings the next thorn. Rent. Just got served with a 30% rent hike come our renewal. Our renewal is nearly $2k/mo for a 1BR apartment. What the flying F. It's a nice community, but damn. It's a 1BR, not on the water, not near a city, etc. The whole area is rising like that. It's absolutely in-F'ing-sane.
Then let's throw the Russia/Ukraine conflict on top and get bent on oil prices just to sweeten the mix.
Finally, people. Wow. Who knew we would become such disrespectful, de-moralized idiots toward each-other? This has really, really caused people's true colors to come out. Being cooped up, financial hardship, a bleak uncertainty of the future to come, major political polarization, health polarization, all of this insane "woke" cultural shift, the general inability to disconnect from media/social media, etc has just procured the perfect recipe for a social-economic meltdown.
At this point, I feel like everything I have busted my ass to achieved is being erased day-by-day by things way out of my control. Rant over.
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