- August 5, 2023
- Posted by: legaleseblogger
- Category: Related News
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Title: The Financial Impact of the Pandemic on the Middle Class and How AI Legalese Decoder Can Provide Assistance
Introduction:
Reflecting upon the aftermath of the pandemic, one cannot overlook its profound economic influence, particularly on the middle class. This article delves into the financial ramifications experienced during these uncertain times. Furthermore, it explores how AI Legalese Decoder, an advanced artificial intelligence tool, can provide invaluable assistance in navigating the complex legal jargon associated with financial matters.
The Middle Class in the Post-Pandemic Era:
The world witnessed an unprecedented upheaval as the pandemic infiltrated virtually all aspects of our lives, including our financial well-being. The middle class, known for its resilience, faced both adversity and newfound opportunities. Exploring individual experiences offers an insight into the diverse impacts.
Personal Account:
Within this context, my wife and I experienced a significantly positive turn of events over the past three years. Despite initial concerns, our financial situation surpassed expectations, primarily attributed to astute investments and salary increases. This period witnessed a notable surge in our net worth, boasting an impressive growth of approximately $320,000.
Missed Opportunities in the Housing Market Boom:
However, while we enjoyed financial progress in certain areas, we unfortunately missed out on one major opportunity ÔÇô the housing market boom. In what seemed like a twist of fate, we found ourselves owning a city condominium when the pandemic spurred a wave of migration towards suburban areas. Consequently, our investment failed to capitalize on the exponential growth experienced in the real estate market.
AI Legalese Decoder: Simplifying Complex Financial Matters
In light of such complex situations and financial hurdles, the emergence of advanced technology presents a beacon of hope. AI Legalese Decoder, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence tool, holds the potential to alleviate the burden of legal jargon and overcome the challenges associated with financial affairs.
With its comprehensive understanding of legalese and financial intricacies, AI Legalese Decoder decodes complex legal text into simplified terms, making it more accessible and understandable to the average individual. This tool bridges the gap between legal professionals and everyday individuals, enabling them to make informed decisions and navigate increasingly intricate financial landscapes with confidence.
Whether it involves understanding complex investment documents, deciphering mortgage terms, or comprehending tax regulations, AI Legalese Decoder empowers the middle class to be actively engaged in their financial affairs, ensuring they never miss out on beneficial opportunities like the housing market boom.
Conclusion:
The financial impact of the pandemic on the middle class has been both profound and multifaceted. While specific situations may vary, it is crucial to acknowledge and understand the challenges faced by this demographic. By embracing innovative solutions such as AI Legalese Decoder, individuals can overcome hurdles associated with complex financial matters. This tool equips them with the knowledge and resources needed to make informed decisions, capitalize on opportunities, and secure their financial future in a post-pandemic world.
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AI Legalese Decoder: Doubling the Original Length
Introduction:
In today’s fast-paced legal landscape, understanding complicated legal jargon is essential for both legal practitioners and individuals involved in legal matters. Legal documents are often filled with complex terminologies, making it challenging for non-experts to comprehend and navigate the legal system. However, with the advent of AI Legalese Decoder, a cutting-edge technology, these barriers are gradually being eliminated. In this article, we will delve into the significance of AI Legalese Decoder and how it can help individuals tackle the challenging task of deciphering legal language.
Understanding the Complexity of Legal Jargon:
Legal documents, such as contracts, statutes, and legal opinions, are notorious for their excessive use of technical terms and complex phrasing. Legal professionals often rely on this specialized language to ensure precision and clarity in their documents. However, for individuals without a legal background, deciphering legal jargon can be a daunting task. Lack of understanding can lead to misinterpretation, confusion, or even detrimental legal consequences.
The Role of AI Legalese Decoder:
AI Legalese Decoder is an advanced technology that aims to simplify legal language and make it more accessible to a wider audience. By utilizing natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, this software can analyze and interpret legal texts, breaking down complex sentences into digestible, plain language explanations. With the help of AI Legalese Decoder, individuals can gain a clearer understanding of legal concepts, enabling them to make informed decisions and navigate the legal system more effectively.
Benefits of AI Legalese Decoder:
1. Enhanced Accessibility: AI Legalese Decoder enhances accessibility to legal information by translating convoluted legal jargon into simplified language. This empowers individuals who lack legal expertise to comprehend complex legal documents without the need for extensive legal guidance.
2. Time and Cost Savings: Traditionally, seeking legal advice can be costly and time-consuming. AI Legalese Decoder offers an alternative solution by providing immediate access to deciphered legal language. This saves both time and money, allowing individuals to quickly grasp the essence of legal documents without the need for extensive legal consultations.
3. Improved Legal Compliance: Many legal obligations and rights that individuals need to understand are buried within complex legal texts. AI Legalese Decoder assists in highlighting crucial information, enabling individuals to comply with legal requirements accurately and avoid unintentional legal violations.
4. Efficient Legal Research: Legal research often involves sifting through numerous legal documents and cases. By employing AI Legalese Decoder, researchers can streamline the process, saving time and effort. The software can extract relevant information, summarize key points, and assess the impact of precedents, ultimately facilitating more efficient legal research.
Conclusion:
In a world increasingly driven by technology, AI Legalese Decoder is revolutionizing the legal field by transforming the way legal language is understood and accessed. By bridging the gap between complex legal jargon and the general public, this technology empowers individuals to navigate legal matters more effectively. With AI Legalese Decoder, legal information becomes more accessible, compliance becomes more manageable, and legal research becomes more efficientÔÇötruly a game-changer in the legal landscape.
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By far for the worse. Husband was laid off at the beginning of 2021 and took a job at 75% of what he made previously after a long period of unemployment. Hasn’t been able to find a salary comparable to the last one since. I had to change jobs because our special education system basically collapsed from underfunding and our son was having, well, a bad time. So I went from a good FT job to two PT night jobs and a sporadic gig.
Overall our household income is down about 30%. Inflation is terrible, insurance premiums went up, and through bad luck we keep eating into our savings for unexpected home repairs or medical bills. We haven’t taken a vacation in years, cook at home always, and generally are just making it, hoping it’ll get better. We don’t have any consumer or car debt and still it’s like this.
Contrast this to 2019 when we bought our house, paid off the last of the student loans, went on two vacations, had a great savings, etc… Feels bad, man.
For me it has been a completely different experience compared to the 2008 housing bubble bust.
In 2008 I was early in my career (maybe 3-4 years into marketing) and had very little in the way of savings. I got laid off and *hustled*. It was tough. I didn’t get a new full time job for 1.5 years, so fiscally I lost a bit because I had to access my savings to keep us afloat.
This time around I’ve been mostly quite fortunate, having been employed all this time until June when I got hit by layoffs, but they were the “We’re slimming down to appease shareholders so here’s a generous severance package” layoffs not the, “We’re losing money hand over first, get out” layoffs. That said, the past three years have been quite profitable for us (just two adults and two cats, no children) thanks to the steady employment but also thanks to lockdown forcing us to restrain spending habits.
We have quite literally not eaten inside/outside a restaurant since late 2019. We used to get to-go orders for the most part maybe 2-3 times per week. Since 2020 we’ve been getting food to go once per *month*, and we always pick it up — I won’t support the parasitical gig economy. Since we’re cooking our own food more frequently we’re eating better quality food and saving tons of money there, also not eating so much processed stuff. We also already had all the tech stuff and diversions we needed, so we had virtually nothing to spend money on. We still haven’t traveled outside of a long weekend getaway to a nearby beach.
I would very much like to just relax with the money and enjoy it but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to retire. I’m hoping to have at least $3M net worth socked away by the time I hit 65 but I doubt that’ll happen — there aren’t many older people in marketing, you see, so I’m expecting some time in the next 10-15 years I’ll be a less desirable hire, skills and experience be damned…
Inflation sucks ass. But we have been fine. Took advantage of those crazy low rates to refinance our house.
Paid off 20k or debt, have a 10k emergency fund and was able to save and buy a house!
Paid off most debt but inflation has killed the idea of new cars or nice vacations
Inflation really screwed us. We bought a house that was a killer deal, but was at the very top of our price range. I’m talking extremely house poor. And then inflation hit. Our grocery bill doubled, the cost of getting things fixed doubled, just generally existing is so much more expensive than we planned. Will be okay long-term because of the amount of equity this home is producing from year to year, but right now, we are substantially more in debt than we were 2 years ago.
Pretty much every aspect of our lives has changed in the last 3 years. Bought first house, had our first baby, new jobs for both of us. Income has increased by 75% but our expenses have skyrocketed too. Haven’t touched our student loans because we’re riding out PSLF. It’s been a crazy few years!
I have mixed feelings about it but the pandemic really did wonders for my career indirectly. I work for a large nationwide company that was pretty badly siloÔÇÖd, due to the WFH push it became more common to collaborate with people not in my specific office. I found a niche providing a service to groups all throughout the US. My salary has essentially doubled, paid off my student loans, and finally saved 6 months of expenses.
Was able to pay off both of the cars along with my student loans. SO no debt other than the house so now we can live comfortably on one salary.
Didn’t really make too much of a difference to me whether we had the pandemic or not. I didn’t buy my first home till about 6 months, along with a car paid fully in cash. I have been living at my parents’ home with my wife before that in a fully furnished basement. We only spent about 1k a month before and now spend about 3k a month living in our home alone. Most are going towards property taxes and insurance/maintenance for the home. Kinda wish I never bought my own home now that I see how much we spend each month. Hindsight is 20 20. Oh well, you live, and you learn.
Really good! With the pandemic my wife and I basically never ate out, didn’t travel, or really do anything for fun that cost money. We had paid off our only car at the time and her student loans in 2019 with the goal of starting to save up for a house going into 2020. We had a savings rate of about 56% on our net income in 2020, when the goal was 38%, so we blew it out of the water there. Going into 2020 we had planned on putting 20% down on a house in the future, but when housing prices shot through the roof we adjusted and decided we would only do 10% down instead.
Bought a house in 2021 with a 2.625% 30 year fixed mortgage. Wife got a huge raise (over 60%) after we bought the house which gave us more breathing room than we expected. Originally we were just going to buy her a beater car til we had our first kid, but with the raise we decided to splurge on a reliable and safe “mom” car for her right then and there with the understanding she would be keeping it til the kids were old enough to drive it themselves. Also paid off my student loans in 2021 (didn’t think the Biden admin would actually try for the executive order loan forgiveness route), and then when forgiveness was announced I got the money back and threw it into a savings account. And now I’ll just pay off the loans in September when interest turns back on, having collected a little bit on it with the increase in savings account rates.
I switched jobs and got a bump in pay at the beginning of 2022. The thing that’s effected us most is having our first kid. My 3 months of parental leave were basically unpaid, and childcare runs us about 14% of our net income. We have been able to increase our contributions to our 401ks, but the monthly net savings goal has suffered with my wife wanting to get a ton of stuff for the little one, eating out a bit more, and her mom getting sick which increased our travel spending. Though we haven’t been saving as much as I would like I’m holding off for a little longer to talk with my wife about refocusing our efforts in that department til next month when I pay off the loans again. But even with that, we have 18 months of savings built up (and that’s 18 months with our living style not changing much, bigger if we cut back to bare bones). But if we want a 2nd kid we’ll have to really build up the savings now because with childcare costs we basically won’t be able to save much while they’re still young. I really want us to hit 24 months of savings only cause I’m a child of the great recession and saw both my parents lose their jobs at the time and taking years to find steady work again.
Can’t tell you the networth increase as I wasn’t really keeping track back then but it’s been quite significant and our only debts are the house and one car at 3.14%.
All in all we’re very lucky to not have lost our jobs and since we were going to be saving anyway the pandemic, or at least 2020, made it super easy to do so. A few raises along the way have made it easier to save for retirement and made childcare far less stressful.
So all in all the pandemic itself treated us very well financially!
I retired in 2020 (planned) right after the lockdown. The inflation and market volatility has been my primary concern. I sold a small vacation property and it is time to sell some other assets to take long term profits. The long term market is still going up but the pan-asset inflation really worries me. Reversion to the mean will be a crisis for me, and everyone else. My personal inflation is running much higher than the official numbers, and I am worried about stagflation like the past.
Despite that I can still put money away and I cut my budget this month to live on less. It is difficult to cut my lifestyle but voluntary at this point just in case we have a shadow banking crisis and the oft-predicted recession. I met with my financial advisor and the overall plan is for 7% gain on investments which will be fine for me, and consistent with the long term, except for last year. If the market turns upside down again I can hunker down.
Moved into a new house right as the pandemic hit, had first child, both of us got several raises (though I’m recently part time for a bit. Husbands salary is 130k now while mine was 80k full time, 41k part time.) Took advantage of no interest for paying off student loan debt quickly…this was the most helpful
Bracketed out of all the cool tax breaks. No more refunds. No we pay. Even though we make more, it feels like we have less in our pocket.
Inflation sucks ass. But we have been fine. Took advantage of those crazy low rates to refinance our house.
Traded in during peak car value and essentially reset myself but no car repairs (yay!). Stopped 401k contributions to pay off credit cards. Bought my house right before the market lost its mind so gained mostly through equity. Worked the entire time and didn’t really lose anything and focused on paying down debts. Inflation ate up any raises/gains in direct cash.
Net worth has never been higher, contributing over 25% to retirement. Inflation has been a nuisance rather than a huge concern.
Overall, it was good financially.
Wife and I both secured full-time WFH jobs. Household income is up by about 35%. Bought a condo in the city near the bottom of the interest rates. Had a second kid (not great financially, but good).
Entered the “middle class” (homeowner)
Unfortunately a lot of people left in the COVID (20% worldwide and growing)
It has been a good three years. My family is debt free. I have most of a decent down payment set aside. My husband got a promotion and my employer was good about cost of living raises. I have an emergency fund again.
The only reason things are tight right now is my husband managed to hit the family out of pocket maximum on dental. Lesson learned, I need a new medical/dental sinking fund.
Our business made just a little less than normal so we were happy that we didn’t see a real slowdown. If anything, people were fixing up their houses since they were working from home and in lockdown and wanted upgrades and repairs. We also rehabbed our 1st standalone project last year and made a decent profit. We have been doing up our own house as it’s almost paid off super early and makes zero sense to move again. So since it’s our forever home now, we are doing all the things we wanted to it. Master bath remodel complete. Kitchen is next. Hopefully our next business venture will be our foray into semiretirement.
The middle class and upper class mostly faired okay during the pandemic because of their home values and investments increasing. Evidence of this is being seen in how resilient the economy is doing despite everything costing more.
Career advancement during pandemic led to increased income and greater savings rate. Inflation is supremely aggravating and tipping in US economy is out of control. Vacations are stupid expensive now. Still being frugal and trying to stretch dollars
BROKE BROKE BROKE
Its been shitty. Went from having money to not. Hubby was laid off twice (sales) and now our house downpayment is gone. Ive never felt so poor before well maybe in 2009 when we married. I digress. We are not in a great situation.
We did good financially. We saved on gas and food because we cook so much. Mental health on the other hand was rough.
Crash, boom, crash and back to about the last boom. Hopefully no more crash.
Completely fine other than the fact that i dont own a home which is big noe
Didn’t really make too much of a difference to me whether we had the pandemic or not. I didn’t buy my first home till about 6 months, along with a car paid fully in cash. I have been living at my parents’ home with my wife before that in a fully furnished basement. We only spent about 1k a month before and now spend about 3k a month living in our home alone. Most are going towards property taxes and insurance/maintenance for the home. Kinda wish I never bought my own home now that I see how much we spend each month. Hindsight is 20 20. Oh well, you live, and you learn.
I imagine thereÔÇÖs two camps, with a wide gap in between. Those comfortable middle class with little debt, primed to take advantage of how well the market has done, via established investments or job opportunities in specific sectors. Then those saddled with debt, low to no investments outside an IRA or minimum 401k, dealt with layoffs, and hit hard by inflation.
IÔÇÖm lucky to be in the former – this wasnÔÇÖt skill. Just timing. Like OP, my NW has increased dramatically. IÔÇÖm not sure the cut off for this sub, but i doubled my NW into the 7 figure territory.
This is also cyclical. We will have booms and busts again. However, IÔÇÖm seeing the wealth gap and shrinking middle class happen in real time with those around me. Those ÔÇÿaboveÔÇÖ me – same degree, same job, but their parents bought their house before Covid. Those struggling the stay afloat – high debt to pay for the same degree, a job they love but below average pay, etc.
It’s been pretty fuckin great for me. Honestly I think that I probably went from upper low class to lower middle class.
It’s important to note that I’m in a very low cost of living area.
Here’s the TL;DR:
– Family before COVID: Me, wife, 5yo, 1yo.
– Family now: me, wife, 8yo, 4yo, cat, 17 chickens
– Job before COVID: Decent day-to-day, good coworkers, good management, but not great pay, around $55k/y
– now: Awesome day-to-day, good coworkers, decent management, good pay $80k/y
– house before COVID: renting half of a house for about $950/month: 3 small bedrooms, barely a yard, rough neighborhood, home office in the bedroom.
– now: own a house we pay ~$1100/month: 3 bed, 1.5 bath, huge yard, great neighborhood, home office in dedicated space in the finished basement.
– Extended Family before: My brothers work with me. My father is contributing to my mental health issues. Mother is on the other side of the country but good relationship. My inlaws are close *enough* and there’s a million of them.
– now: Still work with brothers, both of whom have also gotten good pay raises similar to mine. Gone no contact with father (good thing). Moved closer to all my in-laws.
– Hobbies before: Tinker with computers. Make a small ETH mine.
– Now: half my garage generates sawdust. Learning to play harp. Helping wife with gardens (flower and veggie) in my huge backyard, doing work on re-wilding large parts of it. Tons of practical skills attained.
I’ve been in my company since early 2018. Started there as a T1 software support tech (i.e. you’re using my company’s software, it breaks, and you call the support line? I pick up the phone). It was a good company that avoided the problems that similar places have a reputation for. I liked it. Pay was fine but not good. Somewhere around $20/hour.
Early 2019 my second child is born. Because of childcare costs, we decide that wife will now leave her job to stay at home. (her job was paying *barely* more than what we would be paying for daycare).
4 people in house hold on a single “fine” pay? That’s lower income. We had a good rent payment in a not-great neighborhood.
OK, now we have established the context.
## The job:
COVID starts, and my company goes 100% WFH mid-late march 2020. We do not ever return to the office, except for special reasons.
Late 2020, the person who trained me (with whom I have kept a good relationship with) asks me to put together a lecture for new trainees that I would present on a regular basis. I didn’t realize he was fishing for a new member of the training dept.
Early 2021, I get promoted to the training team. Pay raise applies later (I get back pay to Jan 1st)
Mid 2021, the C-suite says “hey, everyone come back to the office!”. Support department says “hey, what if we quit?” *Immediately* some 10-ish people quit from the upper echelons of experienced techs. C-suite doesn’t seem to care. Over the next week, we start losing another 2-3 *per day*. This goes on for another week before the C-Suite finally relents. Collective action works! WFH is now permanent. Support department started with around 150 techs. Now we’re down to around 100.
Rate of people quitting slows, but *does not stop*. Exit interviews reveal that people who went to find other places got the interviews and realized that they could go elsewhere and get paid better – sometimes *much* better. C-suite does a quick research thing, and realizes that they are, in fact, underpaying us based on local industry trends. *everyone* in the support dept gets a 2-7% raise, depending on what you were already paid and how good your performance has been. Mine is like 5%.
The promotion to the training team completely removes me from customer contact. Thank *god*. I’m doing what I like – teaching people tech stuff from the comfrot of my home.
Currently I’m at $80k/year, and thinking that I’m going to get a 7%+ raise in january.
##The House
Early in 2020 (soon after my yearly raise) we consider the idea of getting a house. Market was extremely busy and we were willing to sacrifice in order to lock in a lower price – and prices had started dropping.
We’d never done this, but we got approved for like $175k mortgage (my area has historically low home prices). start shopping around. Checking all the zillow listings at least once a week.
Market being so busy means that anything we were interested in was bought with cash, often before we even got to have a viewing. Holy shit.
We keep at it, even while COVID starts and we have viewings with our COVID masks on.
Eventually, we finally find a *great* one. 3 bed, 1.5 bath. half-finished basement. Huge yard in back. 2 mature trees for lots of shade (sycamore and maple. Both about 3-4 feet in diameter). Comes with a chicken coop AND a flock of 12 chickens!
We offer ~$180k, which includes some help from inlaws and some cash we had on hand. Even though they got some slightly better offers, they like that we’re excited about their chickens, and we win it.
Turns out, July 2020 was *rock* bottom APR as well, and we lock in 2.9%. Payment of about $1100/month.
Turns out, we’ve *also* got amazing neighbors. Kids of similar age to our left. Very sweet empty-nester hippy widow with an in-ground pool to our right. The only assholes are like a block away.
##The Hobbies
Before, I mostly played video games (minecraft, league of legends) and tinkered with computers. This ‘graduated’ into making an ethereum mine that ran for a long time. After the hardware costs, I made about $3000 from it, and still have some crypto hanging around in wallets.
I went through a variety of hobbies and have now landed on
– woodworking. I’m making boxes as gifts and so forth for family, planning on graduating to like…side tables and stuff. Likely going to use one of my designs for boxes to sell to nerds as dice boxes.
– collecting and restoring woodworking tools. Mostly from craigslist.
– learning to play the lever harp (small enough that it can fit in my lap when I’m on the couch). An immensely satisfying instrument to play. feels like I’m making magic.
Wife bought house in ’10, so still benefitting from ’08 collapse and prop 13 (CA) and inflation from a net worth standpoint, but won’t sell it.
I’m a public school teacher in a union and I moved to virtual with the pandemic and haven’t looked back. I’ve gotten increases that beat inflation every year, and in the last few months or so I’ve really gotten my act together financially. I’ll be out of debt in a couple years (minus house and student loans) and I’m saving toward retirement and living.
It’s been up and down. We had about $30k in incidental and emergency costs in 2022. We have about 6 months of layoffs since 2020. Insurance premiums have risen 50% over the past few years. Our grocery budget is about $800 a month and includes all household and clothing/shoes budget. We choose cheaper home cooked meal options, we thrift our clothes and shoes, we shop at the local Amazon bin stores for better deals and special treats and we started couponing. So figuratively we aren’t better off but we aren’t worse off either. We are treading water and trying to stay afloat. I’m not sure how much further our budget can stretch though
WeÔÇÖve been pretty fortunate. We bought our house in a hot market in October 2020. Saw great returns on investments in our 401k and brokerage accounts. Our income also increased significantly (still middle class). But we also live very frugally and try to save and invest as much as we can. We live in Cincinnati, OH and have not turned on our air conditioner once all year. ThatÔÇÖs saved us about $150 extra per month this summer that we invest in equities.
Net worth is up primarily due to rising home price, but it doesnÔÇÖt bring much comfort since I could easily be out of a job for 6-12 months if I get laid off and have to eat through my savings or lose my net worth if the market takes a big plunge. For now IÔÇÖm playing it safe, staying frugal, and focused on saving as much as possible. I wonÔÇÖt feel IÔÇÖve come out ahead until the market fully recovers.
Income increased by 65%. Expenses were actually lowered since I moved to a high crime part of town for cheap rent. Still wash my clothes in the bathtub with a spin dryer to save money on coin laundry. Cook all my own meals, lots of rice.
I paid off my car and remaining student loan and saved around 100k for a house, all of which is currently parked in a 5.5% Tbill ladder. ItÔÇÖs been a nice a few years.
I about doubled my total compensation while holding steady in S&P 500 investments, which now through this year is almost back to peak. My house is almost double what I bought for in 2018. I paid it off 2022, so right now I’m in a great spot post COVID. All the covid checks went straight to mortgage principal in my case… we have enough margin now my wife just stays home with our kids, and I landed a remote job, so in all quality of life drastically improved.
More then doubled my salary so pretty well. Also waiting for decent check from the fed to pay off my other debt. Student loan forgiveness finally went through this year. Food still seems to expensive to me but doing well enough it doesnÔÇÖt matter. WeÔÇÖll see how long i can wait to job hop to keep pace with inflation
WifeÔÇÖs car got totaled in our driveway so had to replace it when new cars I think where at their peak price wise.
Paid it off though as income increased a good amount. Paid house off also. Lost a few 100k in 401k but it is about back to where it was.
I have a much more cash than I have ever had but inflation kinda evened everything out my spending power. Luckily bought a house in 2019 so that’s where all my net worth is.
Pandemic didn’t make much of a difference for my GF or I, we both worked through it.
Bought a house, which we were incredibly lucky to get. Our price range was the most competitive and it was absolute pain in the ass. Kind of accepted that we’d have to continue renting for the foreseeable future, but something kind of just fell in our laps.
Both our wages have gone up slightly, probably 20% or so. I’d say we have about the same “extra” money as we always did, but I dipped into my savings for the down payment.
Inflation as definitely impacted stuff we do for fun though. Used to love going to big cities for a couple days, long road trips, eat out at expensive restaurants etc. Now we mostly stay in our own state, but do way more camping trips, and basically exclusively eat at home.
I was extremely lucky in my timing. I own a small business and in 2020 I got a PPP loan (which I had to pay some back) but my business actually picked up, I did a cash out refinance on my house which gave us a big check without changing my monthly payment much, I got several other govt money from kids tax credits and EIDL, and my wife’s side business really picked up.
So we were sitting on a lot of cash at the same time I became obsessed with learning how to invest in real estate. I started networking and ended up buying a property at such a great deal that 6 months later I refinanced and bought another one.
Cash started to increase a lot again and my networking landed me a partner that we bought 2 more properties with. Then I met a wholesaler who found a great deal we bought a few months ago. I was also able to reinvest in my business through employees and training and expanded.
All in all we were able to take about $300k and over 3 years buy 5 properties (17 tenants) and increase my business revenue. Depending on how you measure things, I’m probably not considered middle class anymore.
Right before the pandemic my wife and I started our real career. Started with student debt and now paid off all the debt and thereÔÇÖs around 250k in our retirement and savings accounts. Income doubled over the last 3 years. Also missed out on housing but saving for a bigger down payment so monthly payment is lower.
It destroyed me for about the first year since I was laid off 3 TIMES that year, so debt to the moon and wiped out general savings. Also destroyed my credit in the mean time since I was making sure I was taken care of. But at the end of ÔÇÿ21 I got my dream job, income has doubled working on tripled. But I donÔÇÖt see a dime since IÔÇÖm trying to build back better for the next one and still paying everything off down to the last 20k. My investment have grown during that time and booming right now. I havenÔÇÖt got to buy a home yet since that fund got started over and now everything is to the moon. ItÔÇÖs very disappointing that it has gotten this bad for housing atleast another year before I can do anything beyond buying a nice shed.
Bad. Really bad.