20somethingfinance

You mean the same society that built thoroughfares, roads, stop lights, and laws for the benefit of transporting people and goods? Why wouldn't they modify the infrastructure to save a substantial fraction of the costs? Transportation is literally the 2nd greatest household expense [1], and the cost is dominated by labor. I'm not sure how you could conclude that the potential for massive savings is a "toy". https://20somethingfinance.com/transportation-costs/

What is the role of the employer to provide any of these items, these are all archaic fringe benefits that obfuscate a wage and greatly enable large corporations to keep talent from moving to a new start-up. * The pension based retirement defined benefit plan is a bonus item that originated because the government encouraged it in the 1921 Revenue Act [1] by exempting pensions from being taxed as income. Then when the National Labor Relations Board "interpreted" the law 27 years later to include it as a benefit that was inclusive of employment did it become a larger liability. Large companies were able to absorb the costs of pensions being paid into the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation [2] after the 1974 setting of requirements, hurting the ability of small companies to set up comparable benefits. The slow death march of private based pensions follows the incentive curve and the movement to defined contribution for companies enables smaller companies to be more competitive with the big companies [3]. * The medical coverage one vexes me financially, as I do not know how guaranteed this is, of all the things that would be eliminated in a bankruptcy, this is most probable and would save the receiving company a lot of money. My point here is that the 401k and retirement program free of the company means you create an employee who has more worries about retirement, but is not locked into an employer's retirement pension contribution system. [1]…

Unlimited texts. Nope. Sorry, it is unlimited texts for *personal* use --- as defined by the carrier. Send "too many" and your account can be suspended. Some carriers offer an email to SMS gateway so if you can send email, you can skip the $20 Android phone. https://20somethingfinance.com/how-to-send-text-messages-sms-via-email…

So if they rent the device to you for $5 Sadly at Comcast the rental hasn't been $5 for a long time ... a very very long time. It's probably now about $14. https://20somethingfinance.com/comcast-xfinity-raises-modem-rental-fee… I own mine but probably 95%+ of people rent. These are 1960's IBM levels of monopoly profit. I wish there was a way to get more competition!

Email. https://20somethingfinance.com/how-to-send-text-messages-sms-via-email…

You can send free text messages to US phones using email. If you can find an email service that does this, you can adapt it for SMS. Instructions: https://20somethingfinance.com/how-to-send-text-messages-sms-via-email…

> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US Most people don't have any real access to capital, and most people's labor is totally alienated from its actual value. For most people, advice to "Work Hard" amounts to "Sacrifice More So Your Boss Can Get Richer". Also, as far as "working hard", Americans are an extreme outlier: https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vaca… Maybe if Sam is hearing pushback against "Work Hard" as good advice, it's because Americans already work harder than other people in advanced economies for a lower quality of life (meaning less access to healthcare, less paid vacation, less self-reported happiness, etc). Sam's a smart guy and knows all of this already, so it's baffling why he would include such a stupid throwaway line in this essay.

The U.S. is the Most Overworked Developed Nation in the World https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vaca…

25% cash is ludicrous and irresponsible. Cash has historically been a terrible 'investment', especially since most central banks have maintained a policy of creating annual inflation. Warren Buffett has some interesting things to say about this: https://20somethingfinance.com/warren-buffett-is-moving-100-into-us-st… and http://www.barrons.com/articles/buffett-bonds-terrible-in-comparison-t… for example.

This article sums up the case against quite nicely: http://20somethingfinance.com/a-home-is-not-an-investment/ There was another article aimed at startup founders, but I couldn't find it - found this instead.

This is an interesting article, because I "feel" like my leisure time is less than my parents and grandparents. This is in part because they retired at earlier ages than my current age, with pensions for my grandfather, and better financial situations overall. I feel like I have less leisure time than say people in the 1950s, up to 2000 maybe. But where is the data? This article says for the US, hours worked are around 40/week from 1960 through to 1988 (+/- 1 hour), table 5 https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ It's hard to compare in part because there are very different lifestyles. As a member of the fortunate "programmer class" I have high pay, health insurance, easy job portability. This leads to pretty reasonable vacation schedules, good lifespan. Overwork expectations and stress are the downsides, but these are within my control somewhat and I can just get another job. This research paper says leisure time increased noticeably from 1965 to 2003 - an increase of 6-8 hours per week for men and 4-8 for women. https://www.nber.org/papers/w12082. This is a surprise to me and goes against my intuition. Maybe we always feel like we are getting a bad deal. Don't forget the sizable number of lower hourly wage Americans where some people work many hours at low pay and barely support themselves. Americans seem to work significantly more than our European peers https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vaca…