she/her just trying to live the ancom dream in the mountains

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Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: March 31st, 2024
  • Depends where you live, 6 figures is the minimum in some places for single income earners let alone households. For example im working for a company that has a lot going on in Boston, the only way the math maths for me to live there, within 30 minutes commute is about 200k a year, budgeting about $600 a month for a car payment. And about 5-6k in mortgage. Plus utilities are insane so there goes another 500-600 a month. (Probably depends a bit on neighborhood, but thats what some of my coworkers were complaiming about) and food is about 50-60% more expensive my spouse covers that so not sure the cost, id guess for the 3 of us round about another 600-700 in groceries plus say another 200 or so for eating out, so yeah… 6 figures doesnt mean much in terms of real purchasing power the rest going into repairs for cars, home stuff thats inevitably broken in those 70+ yr old houses selling for over a mil. Thats the napkin math, exact math, and budgeting for things like PCs, savings, etc… not included.

    But point being 6 figures doesnt mean well off depending on where that 6 figures is being made. Sure id live like a walking middle age crisis on 100K in the middle of nowhere, but middle of nowhere isnt going to be offering 100k

  • (not sure how it’s called)

    I think you are looking for “wealth tax”

    Also the US has inheritance tax that kicks in once an estate exceeds 5million dollars. The problem is that you can bypass that limit by establishing a trust that holds all your assets. If before your death you put everything over 5million in a trust (baisically a legal contract that acts like a container for assets that a lawyer oversees to make sure the contract is executed) then it stops being your wealth and starts being the trust’s wealth. A trust can have any arbitrary set of rules, for example it could be as simple as: wisely invest my assets and pay out an income to my surviving decendants from the intrest and their decendants. Or ot could be: while i live pay me out, on my death distribute everything left to charities my children are ungreatful brats and don’t get anything. Really it can be anything.

    Those are really useful if for example you have 3 unmarried adults who want to share property and make sure property rights transfer between them until everyone is dead then the trust is disolved and the property goes to: favorite niece or something. It can also be useful to allow joint ownership of regulated items that otherwise can’t be jointly owned (e.g. machine guns) they are also more powerful than a will if for example you want to make sure your grandkids get college money, or dont get any money until 25, while their parents get nothing and so on… anything you can put on a contract can rule the trusts assets.

    So realistically the solution here is to cap how much value can be in a trust, say 5million dollars, and limit how many trusts an individual can be a benneficiary of, lets say 3 trusts at a time.