I Had $100k in Debt So I Moved into My Car

With stories like these, it's easy to blame the guy and say he should've known better than to get into debt. To an extent I agree, however there's probably a bigger picture takeaway. There is a mismatch between what people expect/want based on what ideas are sold to them by society, and what is financially possible. You could make the argument that in the past, the wage to living cost ratio was high enough that you wouldn't have to bust your ass so much to just barely get by. Could he have lived more financially optimally? Yes (you always can). But is it that crazy to get an education and then expect a decent life after? The guy works 60 hours a week yet cannot afford housing, proper food, a family, nor any life pleasures. Is that reasonable? Is this really the best society we can come up with?

It's not as simple as it sounds. Dealing with heat, cold, safety, condensation and even mould aren't trivial.

I wondering isn&#x27;t possible for that person to move temporarily to his parent&#x27;s home?<p>Before attacking me - i live in Southern Europe and most of children&#x27;s here still living with parents or grandparents. I even know a house nearby where there are living 4 generations in one house.

If you want to do some interesting reading about car living, check out r&#x2F;priusdwellers[1]. The Prius seems to be favored because it can idle for so long with battery support.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;priusdwellers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;priusdwellers&#x2F;</a>

This is an exception. It&#x27;s in canada, Québec of all place where cost of living is lower. 1- he should have stayed at home with his parent. 2- his parent should have help him with his debt. 3- he should have worked while studying: this is super rare. 4- university is much cheaper there like 2000$ per semester.<p>Should I go on?<p>Pre-pandemic 100k$ is an insane amount. 10k is common, so is 20k, but above that? pretty rare, yet he claims most of his friends had a similar situation.<p>HEC is one of the best finance school in canada, guy stay there 8 years, seems to have zero knowledge of money.<p>Then uber eats? That&#x27;s weird. Most hec diploma will land you a 100k&#x2F;years, after a few years. 400&#x2F;month is not that much. Don&#x27;t quit your job and become homeless for that!<p>Lots of bad choices here.

Apart from the &quot;education shouldnt run you into huge debts&quot;, &quot;Gig economy and working 70 hours&#x2F;week should not be normalised&quot;, &quot;social life while young is not as important as paying off the racked up debts&quot;, and &quot;this is a TikTok experiment, X number of people are watching me live my life&quot; arguments which I&#x27;m sure will be discussed heavily, I found the &quot;hacking one&#x27;s life expenses to see how one can save money to payoff their debts&quot; part interesting.<p>A house&#x2F;apartment&#x2F;address comes with a lot of fixed costs - rent&#x2F;mortgage, insurance, maintenance fees, gas, electricity, sewage, water, internet, Amazon impulse purchases because there is space, furniture, appliances etc. If one doesnt need the address to register themselves as a resident of the city&#x2F;town&#x2F;country for legal purposes, mobile home + shared utilities(toilets, laundry, occasional hotel stays) would make an effective temporary hack to save a lot of money.

Well I actually think it&#x27;s a good idea. A lot of people scoff at not having a real house&#x2F;apartment or address, but I don&#x27;t see why. As long as you can basically take care of yourself, living in a car should be totally feasible. We need to embrace more alternative living situations anyway such as tiny houses and minimalism because everyone owning big properties just isn&#x27;t sustainable for our population.

This is unnatural and unhealthy. For the individual and the society alike.<p>Societies are obsessed with economic (amount of dollars) performance and the competition between and inside countries. Which on this level [1] is sick and unsustainable. The economy makes lots of money for the sake of making lots of money and for competition exploiting the livelihood of common people, sucking lots of surcharge in advance for the most basic necessities of a human being like knowledge and place to live (lack of those is social if not literal suicide), driving up competition and prices, that drives competition and payments in advance (debt) even further, in a sick downward loop. Exploiting people for extra profit for few that they have no idea how to spend so are panicing what to do with it calling investment, but more like a nervous jumping from here to there in haste, shaking the economy apart slowly in speculational rampage. People making up the society are getting to be a wreck this way or the other (as taking part of the nerve wrecking race or by left behind to rot). It is held together still somehow, but how long? Does not seem sustainable at all. It was better not being part of this humanity. This way. But what else? Could I be a magpie instead perhaps? That sounds much better idea that this high pace nervous struggling called human life. Especially when we had a better choice if we were not so damn competitive all, I mean all the time.<p>[1] Competition is unavoidable with our finite resources and is highly beneficial on a sustainable level

I was going to comment this but he actually mentions Michael Hickey in the article. He says he banked $60k towards building a tiny home in 146 days living in his car, doing Doordash etc., and posting&#x2F;streaming a lot of social media. I believe there are many days where he says his income from views is higher than his delivery work but gotta have content to film.

This man is living the dream of many kids: Becoming a tiktoker (previously, an influencer)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;europe&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;22&#x2F;university-degree-for-influencers-ireland&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;europe&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;22&#x2F;university-degree-for-...</a><p>Yep, that&#x27;s education, for you!

Not only is part time work a financially good idea in the short term but it also looks good on a CV even if it&#x27;s not strictly relevant to the area you want to work in after graduation.

Ragebait Article About a Person Who Pretends They Can&#x27;t Do Basic Math in Order to Get a Bigger Social Media Following.

So, is one of the lessons that perhaps we should all be as frugal as possible from as early a period as possible? I kinda learned that from my poor immigrant parents since i was a very young kid...Not to knock the experiences of the author there, but maybe this kind of thing is not as universally known? Then again, there is a lot of marketing in North america the likes of &quot;You can do anything you want in life! Go to college, and then get a house, get married and you too will WIN!&quot; ...which is of course misses the inclusion of all the gritty details for what happens along the way if things are not managed well, or misunderstood. I learned the lesson of college debt really early on, and have been resistant o take on any debt at all...which is not easy in North America; but possible. I don&#x27;t say these things to downplay whatever journey the author is going through...And i hate to say, well, this happens because of capitalism...but, dang it, if things seem so shady everywhere now, and capitalism never seemed as horrible as it *feels* nowadays. Or, maybe i just need to drink some decaff. now? ;-)

So many of his decisions sound so stupid. Finishing your degree at 30 with no experience? What the hell is that? I started my first internship at the age of 19.

&gt; Canada has a worse debt-to-income ratio than any other G7 country, with a total consumer debt of $2.5 trillion. That’s more than Canada’s GDP.<p>&gt; Higher education was supposed to be an investment in my future. But now students like me are stuck paying off their debts over years or even decades. This is largely due to the mismatch between the high cost of education and low, stagnating starting wages<p>Meanwhile political campaigns at both provincial and federal levels are mostly ad hominem attacks and fear mongering (&quot;it&#x27;ll be the end of the world with the other guy&quot;).

&gt; People love an underdog.<p>Yes, we do. Carry on. You&#x27;re winning.

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Man, these misery porn stories seem to be almost uniquely American. Crazy to think that normal people live in their car &#x2F; live as homeless people. It&#x27;s one of those thing that is straight up unheard of in Europe.