$100,000
"I'm not having kids until we're making at least $250,000 a year."
A long time ago, in what now seems a distant alternate reality, I used to say that (or something like it) to my high school girlfriend. I should've married her, by the way. A disarmingly precocious Julia Roberts look-alike, she was and, I imagine, probably still is, an exceptional person. We had the contours of a plan. I was going to breeze through my bachelor's, attend law school at a major state university while she pursued he
Based on my approximation that you were having that conversation with “Julia” in 1992, $500,000 is almost exactly correct. Just using CPI, $250,000 in 1992 would be $497,776.66 in 2022.
Actually, that only gets you to the beginning of the year. Through the most recent monthly data, you’d need ~$531,026.37
You would’ve been a terrible lawyer. We’re all better off for your foray into ennui and methamphetamine, H.
I went to Whole Foods yesterday, and I’m going again today.
Personally valuable context right there.
Somewhere out there, there’s an ad server running with a cruel sense of irony. On my screen, the end of this article was immediately followed by an ad for “Tiny House RV’s for sale”. Yes sir! Siding and seven windows on a goose-neck trailer, affordable by Everyman, and much improved over all those used jalopies sold when the Grapes of Wrath first stirred the social conscience. When the modern day Okie can no longer afford his property tax, he can hitch that tiny house to his old car and head on down the pike. “God Almighty!” says Steinbeck’s unscrupulous dealer, “I wisht I had five hundred jalopies!”
H,
So much to unpack here!
I did not think it was possible for your writing to continue to improve, but that it does. There are great writers and there are writers of NYT bestsellers. Rarely do I read someone’s writing that could be both. By the way, I am still waiting for “Wallstreet Confidential”.
You have absolutely nothing to lose from calling on Julia. She might actually still “get you”.
H-Man, the times they are a-changin.
Jessica is a good writer, i subscribed. Thanks for the heads up.
Funnily enough, I married my version of “Julia”, we got 2 kids and she’s very very upset we don’t quite have what she thinks of as “middle class” – a family sized flat in a capital city, 2 cars, a summer house somewhere nice and enough cash to set our kids up with starter flats after they’ve gone through uni/college…
I’ve tried pointing out that this level of “middle class” lifestyle is, at most, affordable to the top 2% of the pop and thus not rightly called “middle class”, she refuses to admit it. After all, that’s what a great many people in the 50s could do so…
And, yeah, she’s been to university too. Did take some classes in economics, accounting and business. Told her to ask for a refund. That did not go down well.