this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
403 points (97.9% liked)

News

23271 readers
2619 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] JDubbleu@programming.dev 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not saying it's a bad life at all, but I do not have to think about money at all in my day to day life because I make so much in the US. I'm really not trying to flex and genuinely live my life pretty frugally, but to drive the point I'm trying to make I bought $2500 worth of snowboarding shit and didn't even have to think about it. This was after donating $5k to my childhood elementary school for a yearly scholarship I started, maxing out a traditional IRA ($6.5k) and nearly maxing out my 401k ($18k). There's absolutely no way I'd break even in Germany given I'd have an after tax income of ~50k euros of which the above is over half and it's only April.

To go a bit deeper, I work for a healthcare data company so my healthcare is some of the best in the country with premiums 100% covered by my employer. My yearly out of pocket for deductibles is under $200 and my max out of pocket is $2500 in the absolute worst case scenario. I spend $40/month between life, dental, and renter's insurance.

Rent seems to be equivalent, maybe slightly cheaper, as I'd want to live in a big city and my current share of rent is $2000/month for a 148 sq meter apartment I share with my partner.

Then there's the much higher tax burden through things like VAT and extremely high income taxes in Germany.

The unfortunate part about the US is it is an amazing place to have a lot of money, and an awful place to be if you're poor. It would definitely make sense for someone in a lower income bracket, but once you clear $150k/year here most of the problems of the country no longer apply to you. I still very much want things to get better for the less fortunate, but I have no incentive or desire to leave given my current situation.

Edit: Someone mentioned kids. We don't plan on ever having any, but my partner and I have a combined income of over $400k per year so kids are more than feasible. Even just on one of our incomes it would be a comfortable life.