I should also be able to walk through the worst parts of Compton as an out-of-town white man by myself with a 10k necklace on and not be worried I'll get robbed and shot

But also I need to take responsibility for my own actions and not make bad choices

Is it victim blaming to call me stupid when I get robbed? Probably

Was it stupid of me to walk through the worst parts of Compton by myself as an out-of-town white man with a 10k necklace on? Also yes

You can wish in one hand for a perfect world where you can work an easy job taking orders at McDonalds and make enough money to buy a 5 bedroom house in a good neighborhood with a decent yard and have enough left over to raise 3 kids and take a vacation ever year while treating yourself to daily high-quality coffee and fancy snacks...

or

You can climb down from the fantasy world in the sky and join the rest of us here in reality and realize that if you want to move out of your moms house you're going to need money and the only way to have lots of money is to figure out how to save as much money as you can

it doesn't matter if you like it; that's how it is

this is some bullshit.

my HYSA rate is 3.5% and rolling CDs bring it up closer to 4%. Oh no you have to pay taxes on it! wow, you pay taxes on pretty much every investment that isn't a Roth IRA...

lots of other places to invest, like boring blue chip stocks that don't have huge swings in value that you hold onto for years and they provide a return that is more or less within a 1% of the general market average.

the issue is everyone is a fucking asshole and want massive returns here and now and thinks they should pay zero tax on it, but that guy over there, he should pay taxes on his investments and returns, but not me! I'm special!

it's hilarious i have friends who have like $500 invested and family with like 50,000,000 million, and they both say the same stupid entitled shit that you say here, because everyone seems to think they are entitled to like 10% tax free yoy growth on their investments... and THE LINE CAN'T EVER GO DOWN.

and we wonder why the country in is economically fucked... well because we actively choose to fuck ourselves over collectively year after with out absurd expectations and fast money bullshit instead of doing the boring hard unglamorous work that actually builds non-bubble wealth...

the smartest thing anyone can do is invest blindly. i check my 401K returns once a fucking year and no more and I don't bother trying to manage it to try and min/max and 'beat the market' on it because it's utterly stupid, and on average over 20 years of investment I have like quadrupled the saved income. and when I tell people that, the first thing they almost always tell me is I need to take out a loan against it and buy something stupid with it, like a way bigger house I don't need. they also tell me I need to clean out my other investments and go on a trip to Africa, because YOLO.

Same people who whine to me how 'poor' they are and how they can't 'get ahead'... gee i wonder why...

oh they also are very upset they have to pay back their 60-150K in student loans they still owe on in their 30s/40s. they thought that money was supposed to be free!