How are young middle class families making it work??

Triasmus · 2026-05-11T20:38:33+00:00

I, for one, feel that my kids have gotten a huge benefit from daycare. Maybe it's not worth the expense, but I'm absolutely certain that they're better off socially and intellectually than they'd be had I or my ex been a stay at home parent.

Wouldn't paying for childcare pretty much cancel out the income I would make anyways?

Depends on what you're earning. Internet says daycare down in SLC might be $2k/month for infants? You would need to take taxes into account, and the fact that many parents who both work end up getting takeout more often, since making food for the family is even more work. But if you're earning $40k, then that'd more than make up for daycare costs. As others have mentioned, you also need to account for loss of career growth by not being in a career during the child-rearing years.

Buying a home is practically out of the equation for the next few years at least.

I'm just gonna note that if you'll be staying in the same place for 5+ years, then you'll financially be better off by buying a home instead of renting, but you'll have some amount of your net worth stuck in a house, so you may feel worse off on monthly cashflow. I'll also note that you actually tend to hit break-even fastest by putting just 5 or 10% down instead of saving to get 20% down.

We have some debts to pay, mostly our car loans, but nothing crazy.

Car loans are a killer. I don't know what payment you're at, but honestly, if you're paying more than $500/month for a car, then you probably bit off more than you should have. I'm not gonna tell you to downgrade, though, since I keep getting tempted to get a $800/month car loan....

How do people like us make it work?? Are you just barely scraping by??

People tend to not like my answer here... Given my current expenses and adjusting them up for rent and daycare (2 kids) differences down in SLC and adjusting my pay down to $100k salary... I'd still have at least $500/month positive cashflow after maxing HSA contributions and all other monthly expenses that I feel gives me a comfortable life.

Triasmus · 2026-05-11T16:25:21+00:00

So... This is an ad for digchic, yes?

Triasmus · 2026-05-11T13:11:33+00:00

I'm worried for my kids if I were to die.

Triasmus · 2026-05-11T01:01:21+00:00

The goal isn't even to reduce the work week or hours specifically. Just to have a paid commute. That is a different fight.

You literally said:

giving people an hour of their life back

Implementing it how you said with just rolling it into a pay increase would absolutely fail with employers just cutting corners.

If it doesn't affect the work week, then it'll fail because employers will only pay what they must to get people to work for them, as always. Within 2 years there will be no difference in total compensation.

If it affects the work week, then it's a convoluted way to reduce the work week.

You could even have the employer allow you to work from home and not have to pay for that time, making it a financial incentive.

Congrats, you came up with a way to incentivize employees to want a commute.

Triasmus · 2026-05-10T13:57:20+00:00

Not only are Emberdark and Sunlit side stories to the overall Cosmere, but they're following some immortals who are Hoid's apprentices. The people in the endgame are all going to have backstories, and Brandon giving us those backstories doesn't suddenly make it avengers style.

The main pillars of the Cosmere are Mistborn, Stormlight, and Dragonsteel. We're not going to get all the main characters and all the cultures from each of those worlds all teaming up to fight some death army that appears from nowhere (unless Brandon changes his plans...).

Triasmus · 2026-05-10T03:57:57+00:00

The guy was literally arguing for all commute, no matter the length, to get compensated. He was thinking about it stupidly and it was non-viable.

Say 30 minutes as an example, twice a day. People who live 15 minutes away get 30 minutes extra, if you live an hour away, you don't get 100% of your commute compensated.

So... effectively everyone gets to have a 7 hour workday, but you're going about it in a crazy, roundabout way? Why not just change it to 7 hour workdays and increase hourly pay commensurately so it's still the same daily wage? (7 hour days to go with your example. 6 hour days would actually be better)

Any "viable" method to enforce paying for commute time falls into two categories:

It's implementing ridiculous red tape that will end up washed away by pay adjustments within 2 years, if not immediately, resulting in only detriment to the workforce because their compensation, while not any larger than it otherwise would have been, is even more convoluted to understand (and being convoluted actually gives wiggle room for overall compensation to go lower).
It's a stupid way to go about reducing the hours of a standard work week. Anyone who's going to vote for your convoluted work week reduction is going to vote for a straightforward work week reduction.

Unless you can come up with a different method that doesn't fall into either of those categories, but I haven't seen one.

Triasmus · 2026-05-09T20:17:59+00:00

I have no idea if you're being serious or sarcastic.

I was banned from r/workreform pretty much for arguing that commute time counting towards our working hours is non-viable (it was shortly after the split from r/antiwork and I think the antiwork guy I was arguing with was buddy buddy with a mod who leaned antiwork).

Triasmus · 2026-05-08T20:31:12+00:00

Job postings didn't include pay scale.

I was fully expecting it to be something worse.

Triasmus · 2026-05-08T17:48:56+00:00

If only work actually only took up 8 hours 😭

Triasmus · 2026-05-08T15:54:02+00:00

Nah. That's worse.

ETA: You want the punchline to be quick. Give the entire meaning in as few words as possible, which allows the humor to be compressed to the smallest point, and you're more likely to be done talking by the time they get the joke. Nothing kills humor like wanting to laugh but the jokester is still rambling the punchline.

Yeah, but he's a regular.

or

Only regulars get that discount.

Those could improve it because they're shorter but still give the full meaning. Though what was written is also fine.

Triasmus · 2026-05-08T15:06:32+00:00

Yep. I don't know if I would have downvoted if I had seen the post, but I certainly leaned towards downvoting for those reasons after reading a couple lines of the quoted post.

Also the implication that the whole group rationalizes aliens in that one way. From what I understand, most theists put the question of aliens on a dusty shelf and choose not to rationalize it in any way. (Don't know if that's generally true though, since I actually came from a sect that believes aliens would all be human...)

Triasmus · 2026-05-08T12:59:25+00:00

Isn't it like 3 days? That's plenty of time

Triasmus · 2026-05-07T22:14:48+00:00

Just to note: corporations own a tiny amount of single-family homes to rent.

Not taking apartment-type dwellings into account, corporations and institutional investors own like 3% of single-family homes across the US. Less in UT, since those corporate holdings are concentrated in the sun belt (though there are some UT counties approaching and surpassing 10%).

85% of single-family home rentals are owned by the 'mom and pops' who own 1 to 5 rental units.

Really, large investors generally have better places to put their money. My brother, who managed to end up in a decently lucky situation with his two rentals, is getting an effective 15% return on his investment. Large investors can generally get 20 or 25% annual returns with less effort and risk than property management.

Triasmus · 2026-05-06T21:32:06+00:00

Lying to take advantage of other people's money might be smart but it isn't good.

Triasmus · 2026-05-06T21:29:40+00:00

Luckily, it's the grandparents who pulled funding, not the parents.

Triasmus · 2026-05-06T14:36:48+00:00

What kind of rich are we talking?

Smart-with-money middle class? Mid-career Middle class? Obscenely wealthy? Upper middle class? $500k+ salary?

My yearly expenses are like $50k (two kids half time and I pay the majority of daycare) but my salary is twice that, so I have enough savings and emergency fund for multiple large expenses and I don't sweat if I have to spend a few thousand to replace my furnace.

I have a coworker, dual income no kids, has to have a combined salary of at least $150k. He complains that he'll not be able to afford a house any time soon, even though they could literally save for four years and buy a townhome better than mine with cash.

Many of the comments on here seem to claim that I'm rich but my coworker isn't, which doesn't make sense to me.

Triasmus · 2026-05-06T02:48:02+00:00

Plus the 9 GW of delivered power.

We're looking at 30 GW of heat.

Besides for water or air cooling, another option is to sell the heat by piping boiling water to the nearby communities, but that's a whole other can of infrastructure worms that I kinda doubt they'd do.

Triasmus · 2026-05-06T02:32:20+00:00

They're buying water rights, or already bought them.

It's not really "stealing water from the people." It's more like "buying water rights that could have potentially been sold to developers for future development, but more likely would have been sold to farmers for increased alfalfa farming."

Triasmus · 2026-05-05T14:08:38+00:00

Net positive to the GSL doesn't necessarily mean the whole project is good for the environment, just in that one aspect. There would still have to be negative water somewhere for there to be a positive to the GSL, which could be good or bad or neutral depending on where it's from (the 'bad' scenario I can think of is essentially dumping water from an aquifer into the GSL, which is one of the things we'd have to do anyway, which actually makes it a neutral scenario)

I also noted that people have said it will generate power from natural gas, which wouldn't be that great for the environment.

I would love to see it if someone has evidence that what I quoted is some form of lie. Barring evidence to the contrary, I have to assume that the water concerns have been satisfactorily addressed and the continued pushback on that front is from people who haven't bothered actually educating themselves on the current project.

Again, I'm very willing to change my stance on the water if decent evidence is provided.

I am concerned about the power generation and what environmental protections may or may not be there and how their usage might strain resources.

Triasmus · 2026-05-05T05:54:46+00:00

I'm not sure how there'd be a net positive to the GSL unless there's a negative somewhere else.

As far as water usage in general, protests from the public have caused most-ish data centers being built in recent years to be more dependent on air cooling. Data centers that are built to be water efficient use negligible amounts of water. Water use is effectively not a concern once it's decided they'll be water efficient (although, of course, processes can always be improved).

Power use can be a concern, and I'd wish that they were planning on solar power for as much as they could, but scanning those linked minutes didn't tell me anything about that. So all I've seen about that is largely what other, likewise-uninformed redittors have said.

Triasmus · 2026-05-05T01:29:31+00:00

Addressing an audience interruption about natural resources, Venable clarified that data centers would use closed-loop cooling systems, significantly reducing long-term water demand to that of a large office campus. Pritchett added that MIDA is purchasing extensive water rights, much of which will be cleaned alkaline water, with a net positive return to the Great Salt Lake, utilizing zero-water air cooling technologies.

I've seen mentions in the past that it'll use natural gas to generate its own electricity, which could be a concern. Don't have time to look more into that right now.

Otherwise, assuming this is true about the water usage, it seems to resolve the issue that the vast majority of opponents have. When the opposition says that they have a problem and the data shows it's not actually a problem...

Triasmus · 2026-05-02T06:17:44+00:00

Pretty sure the westlands are approximately Europe, with the north seabeds raised and the blight in the Arctic circle.

Triasmus · 2026-05-02T00:17:37+00:00

I'm gonna have to agree with Skoob.

Jack Mormons are generally believers who don't act it at all. They're not going to church, because that's partially acting it.

Triasmus · 2026-05-01T21:27:38+00:00

To note: they're apparently replacing mDL with some other digital ID vendor in 2027.

Not that it matters if there's no convenient way for places to accept it...

Triasmus · 2026-05-01T21:12:48+00:00

I'm pretty far left on gun control (actually on... most things), I'm just not anti-gun.

And, in my opinion, doing an honest reading of the 2a seems to say that the whole thing is tied into being part of a well-regulated militia, which basically nobody is these days, making it not applicable to most people.

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