Today, I'd like to share some thoughts about income requirements for a family. And this is a topic that I've spoken about before. I want to um make a shift to things that I've said before because we have to make adjustments for inflation. And I, I wanna call this out because I think it's more extreme
than most people are thinking. And this has serious implications if you're a parent or if you're a young person who's not married yet, this is, this should give you pause, it should concern you frankly, it should help you increase what you're willing to do. And uh if you're a man, if you're, if you're
going to be that stay at home, that uh that husband who wants to enable a wife to be able to stay at home if you wanna have kids one day, uh or if you're a potential spouse, a wife and of, of such a husband, you need to adjust your appreciation for what it takes and your understanding of just how rare
it is and kick it up a notch on what you're willing to do to get it. So this is from USA today. It's from August 27th. Headline reads, how much does the American dream cost? After historically high inflation? A long story short, they're pinning it at $150,000 a year on average. And later in the article
, they say where they come up with that number. But this is the table, I want to draw your attention to. Um it, it's got the states ranked from most expensive to least expensive. And so from the top down, it's no surprise. There are places like Hawaii, California, Massachusetts. These are places with
enormous state tax and um everyone knows it, it costs a lot to live there. High cost of living. Hawaii is a 260,000 California 245 Massachusetts, 242 hopping down to the bottom. We see Mississippi at 109,000. Arkansas at 116,000. Kentucky at 116,000 and so on. So you can go through this and see where
the state is that you would like to live in and look at the amount. So I'm in Montana and here it is at 167. So the bad news here should be obvious because now I'm hopping over to the Saint Louis Fed. Um And, and I do want to say that this data point that I'm about to show you median personal income
. There's some bad info out there being put out by the United States government. This is accurate though. This is, this is what it actually is. You'll see this number misrepresented in other places. And it's, it's crazy town. I don't know where they're plucking this out of, but this is the real one.
And what you see is the median income per capita. So per person it went up over time and now it's kind of stuck at 40,000. Ok. That's what it's been. It went down in 2019 and here we are at around 40,000, 40,000 per person. Ok. So that's the median income. So do a little math. Ok. How much does it cost
to live in the cheapest state in the country right now? Using USA today's metrics is Mississippi, that's more than twice the median. Ok. So if you are an average person now medians and means they're not the same, but let's just talk about it in normal terms. If you're an average person and you have two
incomes, that's still not enough to have the quote unquote American dream which is live in a house, have a car, have two kids at least. But this is a family of four. They're only calculating this with two kids. It's not enough. So if what you want is enough money in your family so that the woman can
stay at home with the kids and that you can have more than two kids. Guess what? You're gonna need a man that makes a ton of money or a man who already has a home that's paid off. Now, as time goes on, things are going to shift the value of people appraise in certain situations, it's going to shift.
You're gonna see the rise of what I call neo feudalism, which is those who already have things that are valuable, the value of those people will inflate why? Because attaining those things is now out of reach for more and more people. If you own a home and it's paid off or you own a home and you bought
it for a low price and you have a low interest rate locked into your mortgage. The equivalent value of that keeps increasing because in order for someone else to get into that, it costs a lot more the, the home that I currently live in. If I bought it today, I would have to make more than $200,000 per
year just to afford the mortgage. And, and I, I haven't looked at that math in a while. It might actually be 250. Ok. So these are things that you have to think about, ok? Because they matter and, and this is a, this is a principle that's, that's much more widespread than just the data and situations
that we're looking at here. But it's a really big deal. It's time to start thinking about extreme changes that you can make to put yourself in a place where you can align with what you want or it's time to change what you want as the situation unfolds. What will have seemed extreme just a short time
ago. All of a sudden, it doesn't seem so extreme anymore. It becomes required in order to get what you say you want and what people will do instead is they'll just bumble forward, completely ignoring what they see as the obvious reality and they'll end up miserable because they'll either desire something
they're not willing to pay the price for or they will not do what it takes to get it and end up not having it. So these things need to be paid attention to. We are absolutely entering into a phase of the world where things that were taken for granted before are so ex become so expensive that they're
out of reach for normal people. And I told you this would happen and here it is, it has happened and it's going to get worse, I promise you. And so, uh, it's time to ride the Tiger. I made a video called Ride the Tiger. It's time to look for the ways that you can make the best out of the situation because
there are many, many, many things you can do to do that to get ahead of the norm. It's already the case. As I said, it would be that being normal is no longer good enough if you want the, the benefits that were considered normal before you now have to be more than normal. And so it's time to get on it
. If you have Children, you need to. Again, there's a video called uh Archi Architecting your, your children's future. Is there a few videos on that topic? Uh If you want to find them, you can search for them on youtube or upward dot dot org. Search for the word architect. You have to help your kids
engineer their lives because they are not going to overcome these barriers on their own in all likelihood. Ok. The difference if you read later on the, in this article, they say here it is that in just a few years, the cost of the American dream, what they consider that to be has gone up $47,000 a year
. Now they, they say that the median household income has grown by 46% according to the Census Bureau. That's a lie. That's not good data. This is ok. That's according to the Census bureau, the median household, I'm sorry, the median per capita income is 70,000 a year. That's baloney. Ok. It's 40 it's
40,000 a year. So the American dream cost more in, in these inter interleaving years. It the cost has gone up by more than one normal income. Think about that. So people, most people are in a situation where where both parents have to work full time. Well, the American dream has gone up during COVID
since COVID. It has gone up by so much that it requires a third income just to afford and guess what? There aren't three people in a marriage, not legally anyway. So that's a huge problem. Right. If you want to have the, a stay at home, uh, mother in this marriage, it's going to cost a lot. All right
. So zooming back out. In conclusion, this is one of, of many situations where what has always been taken for granted is now too expensive for the average person to have and it's not coming back, it will never come back. This is inflation is run away, it's not going to reverse. And so what whatever little
blips you might have the, the the outstanding trend, it won't be reversed. And so the question is given that information, what's the sensible thing to do? And now all of a sudden things like if you're a parent thinking about how you can convert your property to have apartments for your Children or how
you can convert your house to adjust to the fact that your married Children will be living with you forever till you die or how you can adjust to selling your house, buying some land where you can build multi unit housing or whatever the the options abound. But the point is, it's not business as usual
, it can't be, it's done and it's going to get more extreme with time. So it's time to start thinking about these things. It's past past due time. So I hope, I hope this gives you things to think about and things to do and and that this evidence helps you see that this is not just me saying crazy things