/biz/ - Business & Finance

By "trades" I mean the stuff like construction/welding

I’m a cement mason myself . They spend all their money on drugs man , the trades are hard on your body .

>>19779072
Electrician here. They spend money on trucks, toys, and alimony/child support.

>>19779072
Same reason people making 100K+ live paycheck to paycheck: they spend beyond their means?

>>19779072
>smokes: $10 a pack
>beer: $15 a case
>hard liquor: $15 a handle
>child support
>gambling
>debt
>broken shit to fix
>eating out often
>buying stupid shit like multiple dogs
It’s easy to live in a rural area and make bank doing construction. Most just piss their money away on the consumer lifestyle.

>>19779072
Bad life choices.
They don't invest their money. Instead, they buy booze, drugs, fast food, cars, trucks, women.

>>19779072

Poor impulse control. People make money and then feel the immediate urge to spend it on stupid bullshit that doesn't make them feel good for more than a day or a few hours.

>>19779374
Yes this is rampant in the trades. I know people with 60-70K trucks, wives with 60K-70K SUVs, that live in houses that are worth 150-200K.

It's very common in the trades. Instead of moving to a better neighborhood so their children can get a better education, they'll spend money on a new car every 2-3 years and various shit like jetskis, boats, and atvs. Pretty much depreciating assets because they make a lot of money and "don't want to let their money sit in a bank" and lose to inflation.

If you tell them to invest in real estate or stocks, they bring up how badly they got burned in 2008.

>>19779072
Being able to make a lot of money doesn't mean being good with money.
I am the son of a carpenter and all of my life I have watched my father live paycheck to paycheck and always bitch about being broke. He was an alcoholic, but not to the extent that he shouldn't have had a penny to his name - he just never thought to put a little away each time he got paid just for the sake of having some savings. His attitude was that he could always make more money, even as a lifetime of manual labour took its toll on his body before 50. And that's the rub - you can only make so much money in your lifetime because we all get too old to work eventually.

Thankfully I happened upon pic related years ago and avoided the consumer lifestyle. It's not that the whole book is good, but the beginning of the story is what stuck with me, where the protagonist realises that the lower class and the middle class earn different wages but they both complain about being broke.

>>19779072
Because you don't really need more, plus those are easy to work on so tradesmen like em

>>19779072
VAST? What does vast mean ? Knows three tradies living in a trailer park, hahaha.

>>19779072
Im a welder and made 200k last year only working 6 months

>>19779072
Most people who live in trailer parks don't even have jobs and collect welfare. You quite literally are making shit up and have no clue what you're talking about.

>>19779296
I used to drive by one of the shittiest trailers I have ever seen. They had a GTR parked in the driveway.

>>19779072

Its about perspective. Some poor person making $50k/year probably thinks making $100k/year is "a lot" even though its below average income. And its about time. Lets say you make an average $150k/year income. But if you have to work 50-60 hours a week compared to the average 30-40 then you are really much worse off. And anyone working trades making decent income over $200k/year or so usually are working mad over time. You also rarely get stock incentives or bonus. So the trade guy making what seems like a decent $200k/year is really only making the same as the average office drone making $150k base with about $15k bonus, maybe $30-50k in stock incentives, another $10k from an ESPP, probably $5-10k 401k match. It adds up and hourly tradies usually don't get those.