Responses to the book from The Simple Dollar
The Simple Dollar is generally a useful blog on saving money while living well (in terms of your values, dreams, and direction). Here, for example, is an excellent post that explains how what young adults face today is enormously different from what they faced 40 years ago. It begins:
Over the past weekend, I had a long conversation with a man in our community who was nearing retirement age. He felt comfortable about his own coming retirement, but he seemed very pessimistic that his children would ever be ready to retire. “They just don’t know how to save money,” he told me.
I told him that, although I agreed with him that young people should save more, there is also a strong case that it is much more difficult today for a young person to establish themselves financially as he did when he was a young adult.
He looked at me strangely. “What do you mean?” he asked.
So, I laid it out for him, piece by piece. Afterward, it occurred to me that the entire discussion might make for a good post here, particularly with some specific research to back it up.
Real wages Let’s start with income. In 1970, the average wage earner took home $312 per week (in 1982 dollars). In 2004, the average wage earner brought home $277 per week (in 1982 dollars) – and it’s still falling. That means that, once you factor out inflation, the average wage earner in 1970 brought home about 18% more than the average wage earner today.
Home prices . . .
Continue reading. It’s worth the click.
He has published a book summarizing what he learned when he changed his lifestyle to become more in tune with his values and dreams, which included being more frugal: The Simple Dollar: How One Man Wiped Out His Debts and Achieved the Life of His Dreams. It sounds excellent. If you scroll down in this post, you get some reader responses to the book.
