Can you afford the 'American Dream?' Study shows the ideal lifestyle costs $130,357 per year

Having earned that much (or more) until I retired in 2009, I have to fully agree and say that at $130k, you would only be on the bottom end of making it to that dream, at that. More like $175k to be in the ‘solid ground’ of it, actually.

The mortgage is correct, the two autos (with payments and insurance) are closer to $17k. The insurance and retirement are close values, but you left off some big items, like taxes (my last working year taxes were $22k for state and federal – slightly more than the official poverty line income), and of course, let’s not forget student loans, if any; as well as debt still floating (like for credit cards, short term signature loans, etc.). In reality, you probably are carrying $2k in loans and revolving debt, if you are ‘middle class’, too. Hence, why I say the value is quite a bit higher than referenced.

The bad part is, not only are the age, experience and education being taken out of the workforce, but the downgrading is like gutting a fish – that fish isn’t going to swim once you do that to him, either. Neither will America. You can’t fire a 35-person engineering department and force the Masters Degree or PhD Engineering Director to take retirement, and replace that whole department with 8 community college drafters and say ‘we have streamlined our engineering group’. No, you fired your engineers, and put artists there instead. Explain that in court, when that next ignition switch fails, or that next brake system on your car stops working.

Oh, well, like musical chairs, I was one of the lucky ones. I played the game to the end, and though my ‘retirement’ is far less than my working salary was, at least I made it to the end of my duty time. I have a paycheck still, I have a home, I have security. It’s not me that is actually the problem. It never was. I made a lot, I paid a lot of tax, I contributed a lot in return for what I received.

Good luck to those drafters. I highly doubt they will get a retirement at all. Not unless it is some euthanasia shot at the end of a short career. Good luck with Orwell’s 1984 vision. The book made me cringe, the movie was quite bleak too. They’ve convinced the young that it is the vision of a wonderful future, and the kids have bought into it. I think that myopic fantasy viewpoint is what makes my jaw drop open, more than anything else.