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After years of working and saving, I can now afford to miss ONE paycheck. I’m no longer poor! /s
Capitalist scum!
Fuck outta here with your weak-ass bones!
Give that man some milk!
We need r/neverbrokeabone over here.
When the revolution comes, you will not be spared.
Lots of people in here fighting about what “working class” means. If you have to work to survive (other than minor household chores), you’re working class. If you have enough money, or assets that you get dividends from or can borrow against, or passive income so you don’t need a regular employment then you probably aren’t working class.
Working Poor isn’t as common and definition varies a lot.
This is it, it’s super simple.
If I dialed back everything, I could probably live a few years off my savings/investments, and selling some stuff. But I would be just burning trough my money, and I would need to go back to work eventually. So I’m still working class, even if I’m in a luckier situation than most people.
I feel like there is a world in between of these two
There really isn’t. Each group has a wider pay rate than maybe is implied, but functionally, there isn’t a role in capitalism between them. Wealthy people want us to think there is a wide range of classes so we argue with each other instead of cooperating against them.
There is a class in between though. Those who can’t stop working and live on capital alone, but still have enough leeway to try and an asset that’ll improve their financial status. For example:
- Investing in higher education that can bring you higher salary. For the middle class it’s a gamble - maybe you won’t make it, or maybe you won’t be able to get a job that justifies your degree - but that’s categorically different from the rich who are pretty much guaranteed to graduate and get a good job using their connections (with the degree used as laundered merit) and from the poor who can’t afford to invest the time (let alone the money) because their families will be in big trouble for several years if they don’t work and bring income.
- Buying a house. Not a problem for the rich, not a possibility for the poor, but for the middle class it’s a huge thing - both in the effort it requires and the benefit of not having to rent (or being able to rent it to others)
I can stop working for about 2 or 3 years depending on sacrifices I am willing to make. Do I qualify as a working poor class?
That’s what they want you to think. If we’re infighting, we’re not outfighting.
Oh I think working poor is pretty easy to define. If you work full time (or equivalent at multiple jobs) and you’re not able to pay your bills without government assistance then you’re the working poor.
But you can be working poor and not in those conditions
You mean above the assistance line? I’m willing to entertain it, but please explain.
I’m not sure on the exact definition of working poor, but I’d say someone who works to make just barely enough to live (aka don’t need/get assistance) but don’t earn enough for more than that and saving for when necessary utilities like fridges break down is still working poor.
I don’t know. I get that it seems like being poor and it’s certainly a dangerous financial area that could make you poor. But if you’re covering all your bases then I don’t think we can say your poor.
I know it seems like splitting a hair but if we define it like that, in general terms, then people who are just financially irresponsible would also qualify, while someone making less then them would not. I’d probably put together a basket of required goods in an area, average rent, average grocery, healthcare, average utilities for X number bedrooms (i.e. kids), etc and set that as the standard you need to be able to cover and not be poor. That way if you’re making more than those items added together we know you’re actually doing alright and we can focus elsewhere.
In a less capitalist focused system I’d probably include funding vacations, pets, and retirement.
I see, I hadn’t thought of that but you make a good point.
It is a contentious subject. The basket of goods is constantly argued over in policy circles. So it’s not a settled thing by any means.
What I find interesting is how often statements like this that are trying to unify the working class (or whatever you end up calling it) just derails into semantics instead of actually people bringing out the pitchforks and shouting “eat the rich”
We are all fucked.
Amongst the little mice fighting under the table for crumbs falling from the cake being divided above, once in a while one finds a slightly larger crumb, proudly raises it over his head and shouts: “See?! The system woks!”
Fuxking right?!
“But through my retirement I own .000000001% of a company!”
Having stock in a company doesn’t make you a capitalist anymore than checking out a bible from the library makes you a Christian.
.000000001% of a $100 billion company is $1. The average person could own per year $5000 if they used automatic deposits and got the employer match.
I know you are trying to exaggerate to make a point, but don’t discourage people from getting the employer match if they can.
I employee matched for years just to watch our CEO tank our stock to 1/5 the original price.
Point being, remember it’s still an investment in a single stock and comes with that amount of risk.
Hol up, you left your retirement fund in the hands of your employer? You didn’t diversify and invest in the broader market? Most plans make you hold some for a period of time, every single plan offers a way to get out of being fully invested in one company. That’s insane.
He’s talking specifically about company matching of their stock purchase, no?
Employee stock purchase plans usually don’t match, they just offer a 10-15% discount. I honestly have no idea what they’re talking about. 401k isn’t held by your employer, and ESPP doesn’t match.
My ESPP would match up to ten shares, which is why I thought they meant ESPP. But yeah, I’m confused as well
Ten shares per paycheck? Wow, that’s an amazing benefit, assuming you can sell. That is basically doubling your money. The best one I’ve ever had was a 15% discount off the lower price between the start of the quarter and the end of the quarter. If the stock was moving upwards I’d hold it, and if it was moving downwards I’d just sell it immediately for the free 15%.
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I’ve never heard of an employer that requires their 401k match to be invested in the company. Everywhere I or my wife has worked you could put it in any fund available with that 401k plan.
Oh, 401k. I was thinking they meant ESPP.
Even so, every company I’ve worked for allows withdrawals at various times for parts of the fund. I need to keep a certain % of mine in company stocks, I move the overflow asap into a different fund to protect myself.
If your retirement plan absolutely has to be locked into your employer, you have a rather large risk to yourself there and I’d potentially consider finding a new employer if I ended up there. Too many companies disappear to be comfortable with that.
- 10,000 seconds = 2.8 hours
- 100,000 seconds = 1.2 days
- 1,000,000 seconds = 11.6 days
- 10,000,000 seconds = 116 days
- 100,000,000 seconds = 3 years
- 1,000,000,000 seconds = 32 years
Don’t be fooled. It’s billionaires against everyone else. Even multimillionaires are closer to the everyday person. The working class consists of two groups: those without disposable income (nominally those with “hours” in income), and those with some disposable income (days in income).
If they ain’t got a “year” in income, their they’re one of us.
I think it’s better to think of it like this:
How do you make your money? Do you need to make a wage? Or can you let your property (land, buildings, stocks, etc.) be your income?
The real amount doesn’t matter, it’s whether you have to work to live or not.
If you have to work, you are the working class. If you don’t, you are the owner/capitalist class. But your analysis is still somewhat correct: millionaires and small business owners are closer to the working class than billionaires, it does still matter how they make it though.
I think I generally agree, yeah. There’s something to be said too for if your money is made by owning or by maintaining. I don’t give a shit about landlords who rent shit out and do nothing else, but I think building administrators who fix issues and handle maintenance are probably working class.
Comes back to what you were saying. Do you make money through labor, or through ownership?
Modern America is like Tsarist Russia. A tiny elite, a small ‘middle class,’ and a vast army of poor people.
It’s generally considered safe to withdraw 4% of your nest egg each year. Someone with 2 million can support an 80k/year retirement.
The average multimillionaire is literally just any person with a six figure salary who has been saving for retirement and is nearing retirement. You basically can’t retire without at least being a millionaire.
Yeah the big difference is now much it takes to amass that money. If we have a capitalist system, there’s nothing wrong with workers saving money to retire with a few million.
What if I can miss two paychecks? Super-rich, or?
GET EMMMM!! WHERES MY GUILLOTINE!?
Yeah people don’t believe me when i say middle class is 300k because they want to be middle class
A person making 300k can still be working class. Unless you own capital that makes enough money for you to live off, you are working class
Exactly. It’s how you make your money, not how much you make.
That’s not the commonly accepted definition of working or middle class. Middle class has never meant “don’t have to work to live”.
In the U.S. the differences have always been defined by income level. Depending on the context, working class has also been used to mean someone working a blue collar non-salary job without a college degree.
I don’t think anyone has ever seriously defined a college educated person making over a quarter million a year “working class”.
Working and middle class by the American cultural standard (as in, defined solely by income bracket and working conditions) are ultimately useless designations meant to drive a wedge between the working class or proletariat as defined by marx; “individuals who sell their labour power for wages and who do not own the means of production”; those responsible for creating the wealth of a society.
The american concept of class is harmful because it groups together the working class members most vulnerable to exploitation; those earning the least and doing the hardest work for the longest hours; and pits them against the better off members of this very same class; those with more time, formal education, and expendable income; who might have more power and means to do legwork in organizing and uplifting the class as a whole through solidarity and collective action.
You are somewhat correct though, in that it would be difficult to make over 250k/yr without engaging in some sort of profit from capital ownership and/or labor exploitation. That person would become middle class and cease to be working class not because they made over an arbitrary dollar amount per year, however, or because they went to school in order to do so, but because they are earning profits from capital ownership and labor exploitation rather than solely those generated by their own work. Yet, by working for most of their living, they are still subject to many of the same conditions as the working class and would likely still benefit from solidarity with the working class.
via https://uregina.ca/~gingrich/o402.htm
The lower middle class or the petty (petite) bourgeoisie, “are smallowners who still work their own means of production, or owner-workers” (Adams and Sydie, p. 134). The characteristic of this class is that it does own some property, but not sufficient to have all work done by employees or workers. Members of this class must also work in order to survive, so they have a dual existence – as (small scale) property owners and as workers.
Capitalists are the owners of capital, purchasing and exploiting labour power, using the surplus value from employment of this labour power to accumulate or expand their capital. It is the ownership of capital and its use to exploit labour and expand capital that are key here. Being wealthy is, in itself, not sufficient to make one a capitalist. To be a capitalist or member of the bourgeoisie, the owner of a sum of money must be actively involved in capital accumulation, using this money to organize production, employ and exploit labour, and make the money self-expansive by using the surplus value to continue this cycle of capital accumulation.
Software and finance tech are both fields where one can make 300k/y without owning anything. Company stock I guess is technically owning a piece of the means of production, but not to a degree that they can really make change to the company. I would argue additionally that owning some index funds does not kick one out of the working class.
Okay but they can easily invest 2/3rds of that for a decade and then live off the dividends. That’s not middle class or working class.
For that amount of money, they’d be lucky to get a couple hundred in dividends each month. I used to work for a company that gave dividends, and their reasoning for laying people off instead of touching the dividend was that a lot of people relied on the dividend to make ends meet.
A coworker of mine did the math, and you’d need to have millions invested in the stock to get a dividend you could actually live on. The fact of the matter is that working class goes up to over 1 million. You have to be born rich or be an immoral businessman like Gates or Bezos to live off just investments.
Even a lot of celebrities don’t qualify! You had John Boyega protesting with people because even most actors aren’t that rich. It’s why Hollywood tends liberal instead of conservative.
Then your coworker fucked up the math. Once you get about 1.8M in stocks you can get around 80k in dividends. 200,000 a year (2/3rds a 300,000 take home) would reach 1.8M in about 9 years.
This is how people retire in their late 30’s (or earlier if they got handed that kind of pay via nepotism/networking)
Getting a million dollars a year and calling yourself working class is fucking ridiculous. At that point you have so much access to assets that if you don’t create a self sustaining income it’s nobody’s fault but your own.
Our company has a 3.88% dividend rate, and when things were okay and stock price was like $60. That’s $2.328 annually from one stock when things are mediocre, and at the time, it was worse than mediocre. For that annual dividend, you’d need to own roughly 34.4k stock, or $2M worth, to make $80k a year.
Your math on take home pay doesn’t check out. Someone making $300k is looking at like $60k in income tax, plus $60k in housing if they follow the 20%ish rule there. If they’re making $300k they’re probably in a high cost of living area, so food and gas and electricity are going to add up too, not to mention insurance. If they’re lucky, they’ll put away $100k, tops, but only after their savings cover 3 months of expenses. Long story short, they might have enough for $80k a year after 20 years of intense saving from a $300k a year job. They’ll probably need closer to $150k, frankly
My coworkers and I were upper middle class at $100k or so a year, and I lived significantly below my means. I was able to put away roughly 40k a year at best. It would’ve taken me 50 years to buy enough stock.
If you’re making $300k a year single, you’re almost definitely not able to put $200k away into investments each year unless you have significant expenses covered through other means.
I don’t have to invest in your company dude. And assuming we’re not talking about take home pay in general finance stuff is just ridiculous.
If you want to talk about 300k before taxes though then let’s do that. Your take home will be around 182k in California, (more in other states). You can easily live off 70k, leaving 110k for early retirement savings. So it takes about 18 years instead of about 10 years with a 300k take home.
The biggest mistake people make is living larger instead of saving larger.
I agree on your last point. I still think though 70k is way too low an estimate, especially for California.
I think 150k (ish) in my city would be solidly middle class. You could buy a house/car/retire on that.
I’m in a super weird spot, because I make good enough money that I have savings to support me after job loss, and I make enough money that I don’t really have to worry about my grocery bill (within reason). Heck, there’s even a chance that I’ll be able to have a decent retirement.
But a house? Not happening. New car? No chance. Even eating out every week isn’t viable. And even what I have is only because I have a pretty sweet rent situation.
That’s ridiculous. Middle class is absolutely part of the working class. It starts around 70k for a single income in a rural area. And 120k for double income in a high cost area.
Who in those income brackets can afford their house, car, and vacations?
600k for a rural house, 5% mortgage is 30k
1.5m in urban, 5% mortgage is 75k
Car is 20-40k
Food is 16k/year
30+20+16= 66 out of 70 but you aren’t buying a new car every year
So let’s say you’re spending 1.8/L on it and going 20 000km per year. CX-5 is 8.2L per 100
I believe that’s 1640L so an expense of 2952
Our number then is 30+2.952+16 for simplicity we will just say 49
So we have 21k left, for heating I found it cost 3840, again round up to 4 so we have 17k
I know what you’re thinking what about tax?
Property tax we will go cheap with 1% because we rounded the other things up. 6k
Now we have 11k
Income tax?
Thats 12 333 but we will round down to 12k
We are now -1k
Yearly vacation that you take if you’re middle class? Let’s say 5k
We are now -6k
there are more expenses of course but you get the idea
Are you a teacher?
I only ask because this sounds exactly like the response a fed up teacher would give
I studied for it but not currently
I hope you didn’t take that question as an insult. I didn’t mean it to be. It just seemed so similar to the rants my teachers would go on when someone pissed them off.
I laughed at it
Your cost for a rural house is way off. It’s more like 200k in the current market. Mine was less.
I’m the one you’re asking about - “who in those income brackets can afford their house, car, and vacation?” because I’m in that income bracket and and able to afford it all. I could buy a car with the money in my checking account, own my house, and take vacations on occasion.
house is way off. It’s more like 200k in the current market. Mine was less.
I am currently looking, it’s not
Your price would be vacant land or American
ITT: lots of people making very concrete statements about cost of living that somehow apply equally to every single city in the US at the same time
That’s an American point of view. Here in Britain there are pretty much only two main classes: aristocracy and dirty peasants. Doesn’t matter what you do and how rich you are, if your ancestors didn’t sit at the round table - you’re a peasant.
There are 4 in the UK.
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The upper class aka the aristocracy. Born into money and titles.
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Middle class. Rich enough to live purely off their investments, don’t need to work, but also don’t the the old blood titles.
*Upper working class (what the media likes calling the middle class). Lives well, but reliant on a job income.
- Lower working class (what the media likes calling working class). Lives paycheck to paycheck and has to trade luxuries off to make ends meet.
The bottom 2 are peasants. The 2nd are "vaguely acceptable breeding stock/upstart peasants.
*Upper working class (what the media likes calling the middle class)
It’s useful, because it more accurately matches what the rest of the world means when they say “middle class”. It’s always weird watching British panel shows and the like when I hear someone refer to someone as being “so middle class” as a synonym for “so posh”. Because here, it has basically the opposite meaning.
I’m from the UK and there are 3 classes. The Upper, middle, and lower. The 4th is not some bizarre difference between the landed gentry and the otherwise rich.
Upper class don’t need to worry about money. You get some odd situations where they have it all tied up in some assets they don’t want to sell but ultimately that’s a choice.
Middle class can afford some luxuries. I had sailing as a hobby and classical music training as well as my own instrument to play, that’s where a cultural element comes in. If the working class can’t afford it, it’s “posh”. I didn’t go to a private school requiring fees but it wasn’t impossible financially if my parents made that choice.
Working class. Earn enough to just about survive. Cannot afford extras or luxuries. Hobbies are cheap. Gonto the local field and play football. The pub and play pool. Video games and TV. If music is your thing, it’s the guitar because there’s loads of those and skip the lessons, just learn off YouTube.
Unemployed and homeless fall below this. We’ve been developing a larger 4th underclass since 2010 and the dismantling of the social safety net. What was a tiny minority of the population has grown and may justifiably be called a class now.
But we each have a class reality and a cultural class.
I was born middle class. I experienced life as someone who was middle class. I financially dipped down into working class and experienced that as an adult.
So my cultural references and how people view my accent and habits are a bit of a mix. I’ll appear posh to some and working class to others.
Some identify strongly with their class because ultimately it is about shared experience. You’ll have someone who’s managed to get rich still calling themselves working class. They might feel that way but the tragedy is other working class people they know will see the effect of joining the upper class. They’ll get treated differently and eventually feel less working class. Those born into the upper class will still treat them differently because not having been brought up upper class, they have some working class mannerisms and references.
Hence the Yorkshireman sketch by Monty Python. Former working class men, now upper class. Discussing the old days.
TLDR: everyone really has 3 classes. The one they are in financially, the one they identify with personally, and the one others identify them as being in. Those 3 might match or might not.
Edit: as a bonus you can be a “class traitor”. As an example Lord Alan Sugar grew up working class. Went from running market stalls to an electronics company to the UKs example of the apprentice. He was a Labour party supporter and the left leaning Labour party out him into the Lord’s.
Even while a Lord some would call him working class because of his roots.
Then he flew back to the UK in order to vote through a right wing bill cutting benefits for working class people and the disabled. He’s now a class traitor.
I don’t think most people would restrict “middle class” to only those who can live off their investments.
We have a much more complicated relationship with class in the UK which is not well reflected by the language we use, that’s certainly true. We often determine what class someone “is” by their social status and cultural interests moreso than the Marxist way. I read an article some time ago which identified 7 classes separated both by cultural and economic capital… This is closer to the reality in the UK imo.
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I don’t think that’s true. There’s definitely the three classes, but many people believe they’re middle class when they’re not.
It’s basically impossible to become upper class. I think I read somewhere that it takes 3 or 4 successive generations at somewhere like Eton to be considered upper class.
Middle class was originally defined as a class that gets at least some significant percent of their income from stocks bonds and other investments. I’m willing to bet that ain’t you.
Is this a definition common in a specific country outside the U.S.? I see this claim in multiple places in the thread, but that’s not how it has been historically defined in the U.S. or in France where the term originated. Middle class in the original context evolved out of the mercantile class that traded goods in cities - neither aristocrat nor serf - during the middle ages. That original definition had nothing to do with investments.
Does it not? Maybe the definition of investments has expanded to include more abstract things like stock in a company, but still a merchant needs to invest in goods that they then sell. Which now that i think about it is also called stock…
Technically that’s anyone with a pension or decent retirement account.
So no one under 50?
I’m a couple decades under 50 and was making like 30-40k up until a couple years ago (and about double that last year) and I expect my retirement accounts average annual growth to be more than 1/3rd of my annual spending.
You’re the exception, not the rule.
Sure. I wasn’t implying otherwise. But a definition of middle class that considering someone who makes twice my income in my local area non-middle-class but considers me middle class would seem non-intuitive at best when my retirement accounts have been entirely self-funded (granted, I can only afford to do that because I haven’t needed to go into debt, a luxury many don’t have.
That’s a definition of “working class” but not generally what people outside certain academic contexts mean when they say that phrase; using the more common definition does not indicate “confusion about your class status.”
As with many terms describing social class, working class is defined and used in many different ways. One definition, used by many socialists, is that the working class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labour. These people used to be referred to as the proletariat. In that sense, the working class today includes both white and blue-collar workers, manual and menial workers of all types, excluding only individuals who derive their livelihood from business ownership and the labour of others.
Emphasis mine. I’m not sure how the OP differs in this definition. If you HAVE to work to survive, you aren’t earning a livelihood from ownership and the labor of others (passive income).
So the poor CEO making a few million a year who is only selling his labor to the company, is working class. The guy who retired at 70 is upper class because he’s living off his investments
Only if he needs that job. But he probably has enough stock options he could retire.
So now some random office worker with stock options is upper class? Tech companies often offer them as part of compensation, not sure about other ones
Buying into strategic labour divisions perpetuated by the ownership class for their benefit does not convey a comprehension of the language.
Yeah, insisting on using a nonstandard definition exclusive to a tiny minority of speakers, so that you can then talk past your interlocutor, wasting both of your time until they finally realize you’re intentionally being an uncooperative speaker, makes way more sense. 🙄
I guess at least this way you get to feel a smug, undeserved sense of superiority in the process though, so who’s to say which way is really better.
Ok ok guys let’s drop the 5 dollar words eh? Im rate limited i can’t be looking up all this shit.
But for real b, “working class” means you exchange your time for money, no cap. White collar vs blue collar shit is designed to separate the working class yo. Looky here, we like wikipedia right? Lemme link that shit
Members of the working class rely exclusively upon earnings from wage labour; thus, according to more inclusive definitions, the category can include almost all of the working population of industrialized economies, as well as those employed in the urban areas of non-industrialized economies or in the rural workforce
Now if you wanna argue the point, sure it can and does mean what youre talking about, but if you take a minute to think about it, which distinction makes sense?
Both definitions are alright, i personally think the inclusive definition is best, but everyone should be aware of both so we can all know what the heck the other’s talking bout
My point is that Joe Blow off the streets who might be seeing the OP’s tweet doesn’t know (or care) that there’s another, more niche definition - Joe Blow only knows “working class” as mainly people doing manual or unskilled labor (another term I see this problem with all too often), and “working poor” as the part of that class subsisting around or below poverty level.
So, if you’re trying to get Joe Blow off the street (or pretty much any other regular person, for that matter) to understand, agree with, and support you, saying things that don’t make sense, like “80% of Americans are working poor” or “unskilled labor doesn’t exist”, and then insisting that you’re right when he objects, is only going to cause misunderstanding, and Joe probably does not care enough to learn the nonstandard definitions you think are better for whatever reason.
This isn’t directed at you, but sometimes it’s really not surprising that conservatives do so much better than socialists/communists at attracting working-class people to their cause, if only because they don’t require a four-year bachelor’s in the terminology of niche political theory to have a basic conversation with them.
Have your taken classes in debate? Im impressed how many times you worked your point in with adjectives here, and without even mentioning my wikipedia definition directly, completely dismissed it as both highbrow and niche. It would take a lot to unravel if i tried to engage with you directly, but if i did, it wouldn’t really be fair since you didn’t actually engage with any of mine. Not really.
Masterful, i respect your posting skill, i bet you wear a lot of people down.
Bye!
No, I’ve never taken a debate class, and I have no idea what adjectives you’re talking about.
But, it seems that making an honest effort to “drop the 5 dollar words” and engage with you here was a mistake, as you seem determined to miss the point, so I won’t waste my time any longer trying to make sure you understand what the heck I’m talkin bout yo.
Workers work because they have to. Owners own and work if they want to.
I work paycheck to paycheck but if I told people how much I made and called myself poor I’d probably anger people. I just make sure that I do what’s in my power to keep myself comfortable now, even if that means overspending on luxuries
If you have no financial reserves, you are IMO poor or stupid. One of both.
Which are you?
Edit: I’m going to go with both.
Being comfortable does not require luxuries or overspending.
I stress quite quickly so I spend money to avoid stress. Stuff like cooking, cleaning, variable bills I am happy to pay a premium on so they don’t affect my everyday
Personally speaking, having zero savings or very little savings in case of a big cost or unemployment would leave me significantly more stressed. That would affect my life greatly, versus not being able to have takeout whenever I feel like it.
I’m not condoning how I live but I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum and the fact I transitioned from one to the other should give some indication of how well it went.
That really sounds like a therapy thing. Because there are far better ways to cope with stress.
how much do you make though
I can afford to miss a paycheck. In fact, I’m currently planning for a four month stretch where I’ll need to live off of savings. Thinking that I, with my 11 year old honda fit, 10 year old PC, and my 2 roommates, am in the top 20% of this stat is very alarming.
Man, if I could split my living expenses with TWO other people? 🤤 Currently I’m paying them for 2 kids and a husband (who recently wrecked our only car).
I almost quit my job after Christmas because they canceled my holiday time off without any work for me to do. I was just going to live off of savings while looking for a job, but the job market is so weird right now I decided to power through it
Bold of you to assume I’m American.
That was silly of her. I mean, look at you? Clearly nowhere near America. She should apologize to you.
Maybe she wasn’t talking to you though.
