The recent discussion on student loan debt forgiveness got me thinking about what we can do to make sure the youth of the future, regardless of economic background, can thrive in a future where everything is getting more and more expensive and competition between people and countries is ramping up.
In this article I will discuss a personal take on living a fulfilling life. I’m still on this journey so I’m not claiming to have everything figured out, but the frameworks I’ve adopted have helped me thus far .
I am of the opinion that a universal basic income (UBI) in the United States can give Americans the opportunity and flexibility to make pivots in their career and lives. The opportunity that UBI can provide was apparent after watching Season 12 of the “Great British Bakeoff”, which aired in 2021, almost 1-year into the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.
Our economic situation today is almost identical to that of the inflation period of the 1970s. The government printed too much money, there was an oil crisis, inflation grew to double digits, the Federal Reserve had no choice but to raise interest rates to calm down inflation, and stock prices dropped. Lessons from that time period can give us a glimpse of what may happen next and what we can do to react.
We are often told that to get ahead we need to sacrifice our time and our lives; every hour, every day, every week, to the pursuit of either career advancement or a dream of financial independence and early retirement. However, I believe that while hard work and sacrifice are necessary to lead a meaningful life, it’s not worth it if it comes at the cost of our health, well-being, and our sleep.
What will we regret when we are older? I’m in my late 20s, and I already have regrets: I should have majored in something else; I should have worked harder in college; I should have bought Tesla stock in 2015 with my signing bonus.
In this post, I’m going to explore what lifestyle we could live if our household earned a median income in 1980 and compare it to how much our household needs to earn today to have a similar lifestyle. I will do this comparison using the San Francisco / Bay Area as well as Southeastern Michigan as the cities we live in. Here’s the order of this post: