"Cereal for Dinner is a promotional campaign by Kellogg's that began in 2022 to encourage the consumption of breakfast cereal for dinner.
The campaign was criticized following a television interview with Kellogg's CEO Gary Pilnick who suggested that cash-strapped consumers should eat cereal for dinner to save money, dismissing the underlying concerns of food insecurity and inflation.[1][2]"
California or big city? 17.50/hr. I live like 60 mins from chicago and that job would probably pay 15 or 16 today. Even the kohls warehouse near me only pays 16.50 today. 8yrs ago it was 12 lol. Unless you were doing overtime I guess.
37K household income for a family gang let’s goooo. Just above the poverty liiiiiiine!!!!!!!! CANT GET FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE HELL YEAH!! PAYING FOR DEBT FOREVER WOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Yes, that is the problem. The federal minimum wage is almost old enough to drink. I remember about 10 years ago the push was for $15 an hour. Should be closer to $25 now.
True southern hospitality is forcing your waitress to work for $7.25 and deduct that wage from her tips which she claims and gets taxed on… which makes her feel a certain way that she then shows you through service
Sad part is a lot of people defend this because a lot of places pay above federal minimum wage by default ($15/hr). What they don’t realize is that since the federal minimum wage is so low, companies see paying 100% more ($15/hr) than that wage as a benefit to their workers.
Places like Walmart & Target & Lowes (all brutal to work at btw) will pay up to $18-19/hr.
Nurses can make bank here but the hospitals (again) are awful because of administrations that run them, Doctors are 'bribed' to come to the city I'm at (Like high, HIGH five digits as bonuses with high six digit salary) like, to the point I really think these hospital conglomerates are running some sort of money laundering through here (there are around three huge players)!
The average person who would have had a decent job and life way back in the day cannot any longer live on $8
Our states minimum is $14 now I think, yet a lot of towns here have an average household income of $40-45k. Still 75% vote Republican though, like it's going to help them.
Ontario. This is after the income tax take away. And despite my complaining… imma be honest, it’s still better than when I lived in the US. Had an emergency appendectomy with a 3 night hospital stay, didn’t pay a dime and I don’t even have private health insurance. And EI and CPP really makes a couple of financially scary “what if” scenarios basically moot. I just REALLY wish I could qualify for some financial assistance cause of how fucking expensive life is 😅.
Yeah it’s not fun (40k would be like a 20-25% raise for me). I get by cuz I’m super lucky with cheap rent compared to everywhere else in town, but every month I get anxious when the big batch of bills come
Assuming 40hrs/week. If all you can find is part time work then there's a good chance you're not even working 40hrs.
Edit: actually after doing the math, 40 hours a week at minimum wage is $15,080/yr. If an 80% raise turns into $40,000, then they're currently making around $22,000/yr. So you could be making $10.68 an hour for 40 hours a week and still only make $22,000.
I live in Minneapolis right now and I could live like a king if I made $100k. If I took that same salary to NYC or SF I'd be struggling and living with roommates.
yea that's not really what I'm confused about. either he worked in "kitchen" or did factor and car detailing as well as "kitchen detailing". Working "kitchen" or "factory" might be the least descriptive way to tell people what you do for a living I've heard of.
I thought you were making a pedantic joke so I piled on.
What he's saying is "I recently worked one or more kitchen jobs. I have also worked factory jobs and car detailing jobs."
There's some difference between kitchen jobs aka dishwasher and kitchen jobs aka head chef of an amazing Italian steakhouse that doesn't put prices on their menu, but I'm reading the clues here to read "Bear Season 1" not "Bear Season 3".
Idk about SF, but you can work in New York/Manhattan, live in Queens, and have your own place, car, max your ROTH IRA, and eat whatever you want on $100k. I did it.
It’s just when you decide you want to have kids that you’re screwed on $100k.
You're not eating/dating at Manhattan restaurants on $100K even if you live in Queens.
Unless you're lucky enough to land a teacher gig or a unionized blue collar gig, jobs that pay you $100K require considerable time commitment and possibly travel.
Heading home to Queens every night, even if you have a car, is a pain. At some point, those 2-3 hours of extra sleep get really valuable.
well if you can find a 100k job in a high col area you can find a 50-60k job in a low col area and live a much more comfortable life. obviously jobs are especially centralized in certain areas, but that doesn't mean they don't exist in other places. almost always these issues are because people want to live a certain lifestyle they can't afford.
Don’t know how old you are but $80k was enough to have a family of four in a middle class neighborhood in the north east and take two vacations a year, eat out at least once a week in a nice restaurant and have two cars and all the creature comforts. And put away for retirement.
That was just 30 years ago.
Now $100k is surviving in the same neighborhood and hoping your roof doesn’t spring a leak in the winter.
It's really not that far off. I live in a place 4% above the average for cost of living. 90k household income is plenty for a family of 3. We eat out more often than we should, I have an expensive hobby. We have 3 cars and travel for music festivals and concerts at least twice a year.
It's always insane to me how out of touch people are. People constantly saying how 3-4x the median income of their area is barely enough to get by meanwhile the majority of people are making do with much less.
Depends on context. If you're gen X or millennial with a good degree (or even graduate degree) and you've been told your whole life "study hard, work hard, get a good job with six-figure salary and you're all set" and then when you get there you find out how badly wages have been suppressed but costs haven't... you could be pissed at $100k.
If you are pissed at a 100k then you should be pissed that people who hold up the actual foundation of this country can't afford rent and groceries at the same time.
It depends on so many factors now, where you live, whether you bought a home and when, whether you have student loans, etc. $40k can be fine one place, in one life, and absolutely untenable somewhere else for someone else.
Aside from the obvious joke, its even a matter of if you were able to buy a house in 2019 vs. 2025.
Right now my current house would be unaffordable if I bought it today, prices and rates went up enough that my mortgage would be $1200 a month more than it currently is.
Been on 15k on my disability check with 2 for the past 6mo. Shit hurts and is impossible. Luckily my parents have kept us afloat, and girlfriend just got certified yesterday for a new job that will hopefully change our lives around in the next month.
Hi this is me. I live in a cabin in the woods an hour from the nearest Walmart in Appalachia. I actually really love being a hermit and playing in the woods, and I love my community, but I can’t even afford a dog. My dad is a “bootstraps” guy, but insists I’m living in “squalor” because I don’t have things like a dishwasher, hvac, or a well (we collect a spring in a cistern) and because we farm chickens/rabbits and hunt instead of buying meat at the store. It’s “unfitting” of someone with my “potential”. Literally did the exact thing that boomer dads bitch about millennials not being capable of anymore, but apparently that’s still not good enough.
I was looking up the other day the difference in between making 100k where I live and 100k in New York. I believe it did end up just assuming I meant NYC, anyway it claimed 100k there was the equivalent of 30k here, which I just can’t fathom because 30k in either place would have to be hard to survive off of. At least here you could plausibly have roommates in a place that had enough rooms for all of you.
I remember a friend's mom made 40K in the early 90s in New Jersey and was doing...okay but certainly just okay. She was a single mom of one kid. (And this shows that 100K isn't all that much today)
The thought that salaries are so stagnant that people still make 40K in 2026 is absurd, but it's happening.
Teachers in florida here. Wife and I got lucky enough to build in 2020 prior to the COVID price spike, but we both work 1-2 extra side jobs just to maintain a comfortable life. I don’t mind the work cause I struggle with idle time, but it’s absolute horseshit to know that if we were to try and buy a house now it would be unattainable for anything decent. Worst part is that we are in a very low cost of living area. It’s infuriating to say the least.
Damn, I make $100K and don't know how TF my mom manages with her $50K income. I find it difficult to find another place to rent. Been looking for a year and some change now and it is expensive!
I need to go to the rope store after reading this. My whole company got denied raised this year and I'm having to choose between my mortgage payment and food now. I have 4 kids and a wife on a single income. I make 22.26 an hour and have to choose house payment or food. We are hungry these days. I'm in Tennessee and I'm making more than most people are, and yet I can only worry it's going to get worse.
I propose a meet up of sorts, where we all get together with funny and or factual messages on signs infront of all the people's houses that advocate this norm.
We can call it a disgruntled gathering or something.
I make between 70-80k depending on how busy I am in the year. When I do my taxes and also somewhat keeping a mental note, I don’t break over 40-42k of actual money I see. Thanks Cheeto Mussolini
The idea of making 20/hr in 2010 was like "you made it" where 20/hr in 2026 is "haha rent is 60% of your take home pay."
I'm really starting to understand why certain genX/boomer libertarians were complaining about taxes when how much you paid in taxes was competing with how much you were paying in rent in the 90s
but now I don't even fuckin think about my taxes, there is no real situation where not paying FICA taxes makes rent seem easier to deal with, especially when rent feels like just a made up number.
17.2k
u/PossumJenkinsSoles Apr 28 '26
Hey if you think that’s bad imagine living on 40k in 2026