The fortunate among us have a tendency to extrapolate our own economic circumstances onto everyone else.
If you make at least, let’s call it $200,000 as an individual or $400,000 as a couple, and you don’t live in one of America’s more expensive locales, higher prices for everyday goods and services just means you have to spend more to get them. Maybe you notice it, maybe you don’t, but either way it’s not a huge deal. Certainly not existential.
For example, a perfect buzzcut from a real barber, complete with straight razor detailing and a hot towel, costs me $75 with tip now. But… well, what can I do? I can’t not have a perfect buzzcut. Am I gonna show up for a $36 Reuben looking like a used Q-tip? Not bloody likely!
If you’re a family of four and your household earns the median annual income, you’re not getting a $75 buzzcut every Friday. Or any Friday, for that matter. Not because you don’t want one, but rather because the money simply isn’t there. You’ll crowd into Great Clips once a month with your three shrieking kids instead. Other people will be in there with their shrieking kids, and every adult in the building — most especially the “stylists” — will be ready to cut their own throats with a dull pair of scissors because “this is what life’s come to.”
We all claim to understand that. The money constraint, I mean, not the suicidal Great Clips dynamics. What’s not to understand, after all? If you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money. But us fortunate folks don’t really internalize what that means vis-à-vis everyday expenses. Like haircuts. Or groceries.
I’ll never be able to buy my own private jet. But I will always be able to buy every single sweet cream-flavored Chobani coffee creamer that Publix has in stock when they’re on sale two-for-one. I really did that Tuesday. “How many of the sweet cream do you have?” “How many do you want?” “Are they really two-for-one?” “Yes.” “Well then I want all of them.”
It occurs to me that for a lot of shoppers, two-for-one deals aren’t bulk discounts, they’re a rare opportunity to get one for half off. But does it? Does that really occur to me? Am I capable, as someone whose entire top refrigerator shelf is now full of Chobani cartons, of internalizing that? I don’t know. Probably not.
If you think this is just me being my usual eccentric self, I can assure you it’s not. This kind of obliviousness is pervasive among the fortunate, and the richer you get, the more oblivious you are. When you become so rich that you can buy your own private jet — or your own pro sports teams — you end up doing silly things, like telling everyday people that the reason they can’t buy the Publix out of sweet cream Chobani is — wait for it — because they don’t make a habit of buying the Publix out of sweet cream Chobani. Witness the following hilarious “how to save money” advice from one of America’s many celebrity billionaires:
Buying two years’ worth of toothpaste when it’s 50% [off] is an immediate return on your money.
That’s a real quote from a 2017 Vanity Fair interview with Mark Cuban.
Let me just say that I like Mark. And I know he likes to tell stories about his humble days eating “mustard and ketchup sandwiches” on the floor of a crowded apartment he shared with five “buddies.” But his bulk-buying “advice” evidenced an almost unfathomable detachment from Main Street. Not only is Mark oblivious to the main obstacle everyday people would invariably encounter while trying to implement his “buy two years’ worth of toothpaste” strategy (everyday people don’t have that kind of toothpaste budget, even when toothpaste is half off), his mind is by now so conditioned to think like a billionaire, that even the most mundane purchases are considered for their “investment” potential — weighed according to the “return” they might generate.
That’s what separates the merely well-off from the Mark Cubans: I buy two-dozen cartons of Chobani coffee creamer because I like it and I can, whereas Mark rents a 26-foot Super Mover from Uhaul, backs it up to the local Costco and says, “Fill this whole goddamn thing up with Crest.”
To be sure, Mark and I don’t have a lot in common outside of politics. But one thing we apparently share is an inability to grasp a simple concept that both of us once understood when we were sleeping on the floor in crowded apartments: For the vast majority of society, “no more money” means “no more f-king money,” full-stop.
That’s the lens through which a lot of Americans now view homes. They — the homes — are too expensive for regular folks to afford, both because prices are too high and because financing costs are too. So they — regular folks — have stopped buying them.
Just ask Thursday’s existing home sales release, which showed a 2.5% decline for August, double the drop expected by economists.
As the figure shows, August’s drop was the 25th in 33. Read that again. Here, I’ll help: Existing home sales in America have fallen in 25 of the last 33 months.
NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun conceded that August’s results were “disappointing.” But he found a silver lining, as is his wont. Rates are now at two-year lows. Not only is that giving would-be homeowners more buying power, it’s also loosening the “golden handcuffs” that’ve constrained resale supply. As Yun put it, “lower mortgage rates coupled with increasing inventory is a powerful combination that will provide the environment for sales to move higher in future months.”
Here’s hoping. Although prices slipped in August from July, they posted another YoY gain.
Last month’s 3.1% advance was the 14th in a row and the 25th in 30. The median was $416,700, second only to July in the record books. All four regions notched price gains.
For context, the median was around $305,000 this time four years ago. So, around 38% lower.
What can I say? Should’ve bought in bulk when they were cheap.
Great post. As someone who likes to think he brings in about as much as H, and who didn’t grow up with money — I think about this a lot.
That said, I’m chomping at the bit to refi on my recently acquired mortgage.
My haircut is $100 after tip H 😉
Is it a buzzcut? I just get a 2-guard all over. I think sometimes he does a 1.5-guard on the sides. Maybe. Is 1.5-guard a thing? I have no idea.
For years–more than a decade–I was “6 on top, 3 on the sides.” One day, the barber asked, clarifying, “So a 3 and a half on the sides?”
“I usually get a three, but sure, whatever.” She told me it’s a 3.5, they just call it a three usually to simplify things.
So apparently there’s some fudging involved.
My hair started to thin on top to the point where it just looked weird, so after some pandemic-era DIY jobs, I’m now a number one buzz cut. It simplifies things so much. The local hipster barbershop charges $60 for a buzz and a shave, but it’s straight-razor edges, the whole hot towel mix, and they appreciate the nuances of my beard. I only tip 30ish% though, with bonus irony that I was a lifetime shitty tipper until I tended bar for a time. Life pro-tip for anyone actually reading this comment: become a regular at places and over-tip. You’ll just have to trust me on that.
Being hipsters, they have free oat soda from the local microbrewery in a fridge for people waiting. They don’t have a liquor license, but apparently you don’t need one to give beer away for free.
Perhaps we need the Haircut Index. I’m fortunate to live in the Midwest. A sizable tier two city (not Chicago). Mine is a number two on top and one on the sides. Takes 40 minutes with the hot towel and straight blade on the neck and such. $40 plus $10 tip.
@WMD comment in becoming a regular and over-tipping is terrific advice that pays tremendous dividends. Loyalty and generosity are two traits that people nowadays really appreciate.
Only tangentially related, but someone IRL told me that many Americans are going hungry and pointed me to headlines that 44 million US households are “food insecure”. I found the USDA report this was from, and summarize it thus:
86.5% of households are “food secure” meaning they don’t worry about affording food, are satisfied with their food, eat balanced and healthy meals, etc – basically, good and ample food is a given and hardly merits a thought. (I am, of course, ignoring those whose worries are dietary – seeking vegan, non-GMO, locally sourced, low-carb, low-fat, low-guilt, etc food is not food insecurity in my book.)
8.5% are mildly “food insecure” meaning they sometimes (occasionally, but not often) worry about affording food, are not satisfied with their food, don’t eat balanced or healthy meals for financial reasons, or rely on lower-cost foods.
5.0% are very “food insecure” meaning they often (but not necessarily most of the time) worry about affording food, run out of some foods, eat smaller portions or lack healthy/balanced meals for financial reasons, or rely on lower-cost foods.
Doing some interpolation, I think about 1% of households are sometimes literally “going hungry” (at least three times a year, they did not eat for a day because they couldn’t afford food).
Okay, that was barely even tangential to toothpaste, and entirely irrelevant to houses.
On the topic of houses, I saw a chart indicating that 18% of surveyed households expect to move their primary residence within the coming year. This metric was 20% in 2013, declined gradually to 18% by 2019, suddenly plunged in 2020 [pandemic shelter-in-place?], partially recovered in 2021 [low rates, WFH migration?], plunged again to lows <14% in 2022 and 2023 [low rate lock-in?], and in just the last several months has suddenly shot up from 14% to 18% i.e. back to pre-pandemic levels [pent-up demand, expectation of lower rates?]
So I think while houses are unaffordable for many, others – who probably already own houses – are watching and getting ready.
I don’t believe, for a second, that 86.5% of American households never worry about groceries. I realize that’s not quite what the survey you cited is out to measure, but that’s one implication. And, again, I simply don’t believe it. It’s counterintuitive nearly to the point of absurdity.
Further, I’m really not sure what we, as Americans, are trying to prove by saying only 1% of households in the richest country the world’s ever known are literally going without food. There are 130 million households in the US. Are we really bragging, as the reserve currency issuer, that “just” 1.3 million households are sometimes going without food for a day? If so, we’re pathetically stupid.
I did have a point about housing – on food, just sharing data that was interesting to me.
Do I think the 86.5% is credible? Not sure but I think it’s a matter of are we talking “worry” or “Worry” or “WORRY”, i.e. of a question of degree. Like, I might think twice about picking up $100 of ribeye and might put it down to buy some short ribs or lamb chops or whatever. My friend might do the same with lamb chops vs pork chops, another friend might with organic chicken vs mass market bird, but none of us should qualify as other than “food secure” even if, over a glass of wine, we claim to little-w “worry” about rising food prices and even though the friend who picked the cheaper chicken because her Social Security check doesn’t go that far and she does big-W “Worry” about her rent and major car repairs – none of us are, to my way of thinking, food insecure.
As for the 1%, I don’t know if that seems high or low. By available data, close to 1% of the population of my city are unsheltered homeless (“point in time” count is a few thousand, city population about half a million), so seems perfectly plausible that over 1% experience intermittent hunger. We do have a larger per capita homelessness issue than most cities, but are also higher median income than most, so maybe we’re not far off the national average.
The US is an aggressively capitalist country, social safety nets are hung very low, stigmas and obstacles to help abound, and people generally have to make their own way without a lot of institutional help.
Oh, there’s plenty of “institutional help.” If you’re already rich. That’s the thing about capitalism: It’s just a system of ongoing handouts for people at the top and artificial obstacles for people at the bottom.
I mean, John you’re an eminently smart guy: Does it strike you that most prosperous Americans “generally had to make their own way”? That’s a rhetorical question.
Obviously, scions of the wealthy excepted . . .
For people who are at risk of becoming food insecure, though, I do think help is limited and hard to navigate.
H:
Yes a 1.5 guard is a thing. Ask me why: I do my own buzz cut and my wife finishes it off. I guess I could pay $75, but I don’t care if I look like a “used Q-tip.
I still cut my own hair. A throwback to an earlier time when I was in survival mode and found a semi-regular hair cut was better than delaying the inevitable for too long.
In the spirit if a previous article I could feign indignation that you are getting $75 haircuts or your other reader getting $100 hair cuts. However today the process of cutting my hair takes time out of my decidedly non-busy schedule therefore is now an act of entertainment and self care. That I could feign indignation over others $75 to $100 haircuts is an added psychological boost.
Oh if the worlds problems were so easy to categorize and sidestep by buying a cheap air clipper. BTW my clipper set does not have half numbers, I only use whole numbered guards. I do not do a buzz cut, I do a layered cut with top hand trimmed less occasionally than the sidewalls.
I do still wardrobe in fine semi-feigned indigation spicing it up by shopping at Walmart and Academy Sports. However I am going positively upscale for a black tie wedding event for nephew by shopping at Macy’s and J.C. Penney. Oh and yes I can feign indignation or simply recognize that my survival mode still has limits and must fit into a smaller budget than $200,000 per year.
I count myself among the at-home buzz cutters rocking the q-tip look. I do somewhat miss the experience of getting a haircut, but I have a hard enough time stomaching the cost of my kids’ and wife’s haircuts. Thankfully, our kids are now at an age where we don’t have to pin them down in the barber’s chair or pay a 20% premium for them to sit in a fire truck while they get their hair cut.
The points about billionaires being divorced from the reality of fiscal restraints is well-taken though. My wife and I make good money, so even with three kids (thank god they are now all out of daycare) and living in a very high cost of living area, we can live comfortably. The issue for me is that I’m getting pretty tired of making a living staring at spreadsheets and zoom screens all day. For better or worse, I’ve always felt like I should be a teacher, but it’s hard to make that leap when the price of groceries would become a very real issue if I did that despite having a pretty nice nest egg at this point. I was very frugal growing up and I don’t know how easy it would be to get myself (or my wife for that matter) back in that mindset.
Then again, other people seem to make it work despite not having a nest egg to fall back on and I can pretty much guarantee I won’t look back fondly on the years I wasted working from home with all my adult interactions only happening through a screen. It’d be one thing if I felt like I was putting in an honest day’s work, but I get nowhere near the same satisfaction from the work I do now as I did after a hard day of one of my summer construction jobs. At least when I visit my hometown, I can point to something I built, but I don’t think anyone will look back and see all those spreadsheets buried deep on a google drive and be impressed by a model that lost its relevance years ago.
All I know for sure is that if I ever go to Mark Cuban’s house, I don’t need to bring my own toothpaste.
Fairfax County in Virginia is one of the wealthiest counties in the US. Over 30% of the students in the Fairfax County School System are considered economically disadvantaged and eligible for free or reduced meals. Not only meals while at school but also to take home at the end of the day. There is a non profit arm of the school district which raises money for food as well. During Covid and remote learning food was made available to be picked up.
I was raised in a family that went food shopping on payday and waiting at the store for my dad to come from work with his paycheck and pay for the groceries. Now those days are long behind me fortunately. But the stats in Fairfax County shook me when I first learned of them. The wealth gap in this country is as wide as the Mississippi. Cuban’s toothpaste recommendation is equivalent to Let them eat cake. Completely oblivious. Why the red states relative to blue states are poorer and less educated veer republican is beyond me. The republicans are intent on taking away all benefits and ensure that every last dollar goes to the wealthy. They vote against their own interests. Their anger is directed at the wrong party.