The Luxury of Being Average

It’s 11 p.m. I’m lying in bed, trying to go to sleep so that I can get up on time in the morning. But I can’t. Not because I’m thinking about what I have to do tomorrow, or reliving the many embarrassing moments or mistakes I have made in my life (okay, I admit, sometimes this is the case). But because my brain won't shut the fuck up about how I need to make more money.

It could be the fact that I’m almost 30 and I've started to seriously judge my current position in life. That's what usually happens to 30-somethings. I certainly never expected to be rich, but I did expect…better? Maybe that was naïve.

But I think the real source of my sleep disruption was born from a recent online tutoring session I attended. My tutor was far beyond retirement age. Tutoring out of want and not out of necessity.

He had some difficulty with Zoom (thankfully he had a young cohost to make sure things didn’t go completely off the rails), and his method of teaching consisted of working through the workbook problems with us and reading the answer key to explain them. Largely ineffective. But he was free, and I definitely didn’t have private tutor money.

At the end of the session, unprompted, he told us a little about his life. To summarize: He went to high school, graduated college, and got a job as a teacher. After a few years of working and saving, he was able to buy a house in Cape May, NJ for $30,000.

$30,000.

"And now it's worth $800,000," he said, chuckling a little. He was met with silence, to the surprise of absolutely no one. But that got me thinking.

Before the recent wave of inflation came along, a lot of us were already not doing well. Here is an article from 2019 that talks about how nearly 8 in 10 U.S. workers live paycheck to paycheck. Here is another article from 2014 about the same thing. And another from 2012. I could keep going back, but the point is this isn’t a new phenomenon.

Incomes have been kneecapped by one or more of these things:

Wages are stagnant or have decreased for the middle and working class since 1979.

We pay more for healthcare, from the ambulance ride to the exorbitantly up charged bag of salt water they hook up to your arm, to the prescription drugs.

Food prices are up, and shrinkflation has been happening for a long time.

Student loans due to runaway tuition costs.

We have a nationwide affordable housing shortage, and first-time homebuyers are looking at a housing market where single-family homes cost 5.3 times more than the median household income, up from about three times more than the median household income in the 90s.

If you have kids, you are well aware that childcare costs as much as a rent or mortgage payment.

All of these obstacles are at odds with my very unremarkable dream of owning my own house one day.

I graduated high school and college, just like my tutor did. And I'm pretty responsible with my money. I work a regular 9 to 5. I set aside a portion of my paycheck toward retirement. I have a small emergency fund. I rarely leave my apartment and don't have a designer anything. But after I pay all of my bills, I only have a tiny bit left to shove into my savings, which could be wiped out almost instantly by any major setback. Never mind saving for a house.

So the next logical step is, getting a second job or a side hustle. And there are tons. “Create an app!” “Food delivery!” “Take paid surveys!” “Affiliate marketing!” “Create an online course!” "Be an influencer!" This isn't even an exhaustive list.

Hustle Culture is calling, and I know I have to pick up the phone.

But I don't want to.

My tutor didn’t have to do that. He could if he wanted to, but ultimately a teacher working one job could get a modest home if he worked a couple of years. Now, teachers are selling blood to keep up with their bills.

Complain about this to anyone though, and you could be met with a number of responses. "Life isn't fair." "You're just lazy." "Get a better job." "You must be spending money on things you don't need, like $1000 phones." "But incomes were much lower and interest rates were higher." "I did it, so you can too." "Shouldn't have got a degree in underwater basket weaving." "Your generation is entitled."

Maybe I am entitled. I feel entitled to get the same outcome that prior generations did when I follow their same steps.

But instead, it seems that you either have to be working in a dwindling number of high-paying professions that require specialized skills: engineer, data scientist, dentist, lawyer, pharmacist, actuary, etc. Or you’re a hustler juggling multiple jobs and side gigs so that you can make it.

When did having an average life become a luxury?