This Is What Life Looks Like When You Can’t Afford Anything!

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]I feel like no one talks about how embarrassing it is to admit when you can't afford something.

[00:00:03]>> You ever get paid and you have more problems after payday than you had before payday because the math ain't math and the paycheck is not enough in order to pay for all of your bills. I am just so damn tired of being broke for real. Like fed all the way up because we get paid and we're broke. Like we're literally living paycheck to paycheck.

[00:00:26]We're broke before the next check comes in. At this point, I just want to live in my car for like six months and save money. Is anybody else struggling? Like, damn, Craig. It's not that I ain't got no money. It's not that I ain't got no money. Everything's so [ __ ] expensive.

[00:00:44]Like, like, we have to pay to live.

[00:00:49]>> So, my rent is close to two grand.

[00:00:55]Food cost is going up.

[00:00:57]I just filled up my gas tank, it was like 48 bucks.

[00:01:02]My car payments close to 500.

[00:01:06]My insurance is between 1 and two.

[00:01:13]My light bill's about two something.

[00:01:19]My internet's 10 and something.

[00:01:22]My phone bills about close to 100.

[00:01:28]But yet $45,000 is too much for a single person in income.

[00:01:37]Are you kidding me?

[00:01:41]Like at this point, I just want to live in my car for like 6 months and save money.

[00:01:54]Is anybody else struggling? Like, damn, Craig. It's not that I ain't got no money. It's not that I ain't got no money. Everything's so [ __ ] expensive.

[00:02:05]Like, like, we have to pay to live.

[00:02:14]Not even our water's free.

[00:02:16]Unless you want us to drink sink water.

[00:02:19]Ain't nobody telling if that shit's clean. It's not clean. It's not purified.

[00:02:30]By the way, not even sink water is free.

[00:02:32]So even if you drink sink water without a purifier, you're still paying for your water. I literally literally just got a bill in the mail, I don't know, three days ago from my local government for my water and sewer and it has increased more than 100%. Over the 3 months compared to last year. Granted, I have a small leak in my faucet that I need to get fixed, but that aside, my god. So, what are you saying? You know what else, too? cuz I've done videos on this channel about people who choose to live in their cars or are forced in a way to live in their cars and you're like or me me I'm kind of like how does this happen to people? Some people are just fed up with how expensive things are so they decide to live in their car.

[00:03:17]So he was I think joking partly but if you think about it people like him are the folks who sometimes say you know what I'm not paying rent for the next 6 months I'm going to live in my car now when it gets that bad you know we have problems. You ever get paid and you have more problems after payday than you had before payday because the math ain't math and the paycheck is not enough in order to pay for all of your bills. And even though you made more on this paycheck than you made on your previous paycheck, it is still not enough to get you out of the hole that you're in. So, you know, you're going to have to go to work again and probably not eat uh as much food because you don't have any money for that. And then you won't be able to afford your hotel rooms for this week because you don't have the money because your check was just you have other bills to pay for and again you don't make as much money and you were going to be able to get a second job but then your manager changed all of your hours up and then possibly could be changing your hours again and you've been having to deal with your your schedule being changed for like six weeks, six weeks plus uh every week. And so it's been almost impossible for you to be even have a set schedule because of this happening. And even when you were going to get a job, you can't now because the days that you're supposed to have off are the days you now work and the days you have off are the days that they don't need people for. So that has kind completely gotten there. You can't do Uber Eats or Door Dash anymore because your car is not doing so well and it's not in any kind of condition to do any of those things. You've tried to do other things in order to make money, but that has actually been costing you money. So now you're in more debt and you haven't eaten all day and now my stomach hurts.

[00:04:57]It's just been one of those days.

[00:04:58]>> Sounds like she has a lot going on. She said that she can't afford to pay for her hotels. Am I hearing that she is homeless and living in hotels and she has car problems and she can't afford to eat enough food, she said. And on top of that, she can't get a second job because the schedule's all jacked up. When you're living like she's living or like it sounds like she's living, which is probably very, very meanial work. And that's no disrespect. I know the term sounds kind of disrespectful, but just hands-on low wage, lowkilled labor. And I'm assuming here it can be difficult. And as you can see, it's more than just the the low wage. It's also the everything that goes with it. not having as much autonomy with your schedule, which has downstream effects with everything else.

[00:05:52]Needing to work multiple jobs that don't necessarily pay that much. And it's kind of a ripple effect or a compounding effect. And it's difficult when you're in a situation like her to pull yourself out cuz it does seem like everything is a series of unfortunate events. Like she just listed out a bunch of different things and someone might look at her from the outside and go, you know, suck it up. Figure it out. what she will, but also it's when you're in that position, it's very difficult to even breathe and think past today.

[00:06:22]>> I feel like no one talks about how embarrassing it is to admit when you can't afford something. This weekend is actually my sister-in-law and future and brother-in-law's bachelor and bachelorette parties, and my husband and I are skipping out because we couldn't afford it. Their wedding is in July, and we are going out of town to be in their wedding, and we're really excited. We're in the wedding party and obviously we're invited to the bachelorette and bachelor parties and initially we did commit to it and we paid for our Airbnb stays but we never booked like flights or anything like that. A couple months later, we decided against it because it was going to be lots of money for us to either fly our kids to Arizona so that my parents could watch them while we were both out of town. And between both of our flights, potentially flights for our kids, and just having spending money, like this would have been a few thousand that we just don't have. Granted, my husband and I do make decent money, so we could have budgeted out and saved for it like we have been doing for the wedding and other like big life events we have coming up, but in the state that we're in trying to pay off debt, it really just did not make sense to do these extra trips, especially considering that we also went to Disney and took our kids back in February. It sucks and I have so much FOMO.

[00:07:30]>> This, ladies and gentlemen, is a great example of choosing to live below your means. At least I think so because they could easily go ahead and put it on debt or credit I should say or tap into their emergency funds, but instead they're deciding, you know what, we're already going to go to the wedding. We're not going to stretch ourselves to be able to afford this bachelor party. I think it's a great example of living below your means because you'll hear a lot of people talk about how the economy is crushing them, how they can't afford anything and XYZ.

[00:07:56]to really peel back the curtain and really examine what they're talking about a lot of time is this type of stuff discretionary things which you might think or feel is very important and rightfully so but how important is it so if someone's going to say I can't afford to live I would imagine they're talking about the essentials food shelter water and that's it the bare minimum bare necessities safety not traveling for bachelor parties not going on fancy vacations not getting fancy fancy lattes, not driving the fanciest car.

[00:08:29]>> I am just so damn tired of being broke for real. Like fed all the way up because we get paid and we're broke.

[00:08:38]Like we're literally living paycheck to paycheck. We're broke before the next check comes in. And I was leasing a car that's $500 a month that we saved. But let's be honest, the more money you make, the more money you spend. The more money you save, the more money you spend. It's just this vicious cycle that we can't get out of. And my husband who has worked for the same company for nine years, he finally got a promotion and a pay raise and then they cut his hours.

[00:09:01]He works another job on the side like just to bring in enough money for us to survive. We have a mortgage, like we have our regular bills, we just don't have a car payment. And granted, yeah, like we're homeowners, right? So, we have equity, but equity doesn't help buy groceries.

[00:09:18]>> On paper, maybe they have a good net worth because of the equity in their house. But like she just mentioned, you can't take the equity in your house and go buy milk and eggs with it and meat with it unless you get a home equity line of credit or you take out a, you know, you refinance or something like that, which would then reset your mortgage and have other situ, you know, other ramifications.

[00:09:38]>> And then my niece said the funniest thing to me the other day. I was talking to her mom and I'm like, I've got $50 for groceries this week. $50 to feed all four of us. And my niece was like, you don't get food stamps? So, I'm like, "Hell no, we don't get food stamps.

[00:09:52]Girl, don't you know the more you make, the less help you get." I mean, yeah, I'm a stay-at-home mom, right? So, I would love to get a job where I felt that I was paid my worth, but because of I was an addict and and I'm in recovery, I have a record and I have been offered keyholder jobs and I'm like, I can't take it because I already know when you do my background check and sure enough, they're like, "Yeah, we're sorry. they just can't be a key holder. So like I would just be making minimum wage and I that's not to me that's not worth it to have to pay daycare and not be with my kids.

[00:10:28]>> Okay. So she added some additional context there that does shed light on the situation. Nonetheless, regardless of the reason why she's struggling to get a job that pays her decently, it still points out the fact that a lot of couples are in the same situation where they they have to weigh out, okay, does it make sense to go get a job or does it make sense to stay home with their kids?

[00:10:51]Because when you look at the amount of money it costs to pay for daycare versus how much I'm earning or I would earn from this job, either it equals out earn less than it costs to pay for daycare.

[00:11:02]That's something that I think gets forgotten about. I don't know if that if the cost of child care is included in the consumer price index, which is what they use to gauge inflation. I don't know if it's in there or not. I have to check. If it's not, it probably should be because it's very expensive. It should be in the core of consumer price index. Uh the basket of goods as they say. It's no joke. Anyway, another example of someone who is fighting for their life in this economy.

[00:11:27]>> Hey, real quick. How is everyone affording anything right now? I feel like the prices keep going up. We just have to deal with it. If you want to buy tickets to the World Cup or Monsters, Inc. on ice, you got to deal with something called dynamic pricing, which is basically tech speak for pricing that [ __ ] you. I know I'm tapping my credit card to iPads I should not be tapping it too cuz the total was always news to me.

[00:11:44]I spent $7 on delivery fees on soup dumplings last week. That same $7 could have bought me one cup of coffee. And so that's how bad things have gotten. And then you go on a streaming service to watch something. I'll stay at home, save some money, but all the streaming services have removed password sharing.

[00:11:58]They're like, "Are you are you traveling? We think you might be traveling." It's like, "Yeah, yeah, I am traveling between my girlfriend's apartment and my apartment. You got to honor that relationship." And then old people have the nerve to be like, "What's wrong with the younger generations? They're not going out.

[00:12:11]They're not drinking. They're not getting laid. First of all, calm down, perverts. A beer is not $25 anymore.

[00:12:16]Cocktails start at $18. Mocktails are inexplicably $17. You can't tell me something called a phony negroni should cost the same as a 10 pack of AA batteries." And I think what annoys me is the prices keep going up. The wealthier among us can afford it, but the rest of us are just stuck in the goddamn casino. I know more people with kalshi accounts, with poly market accounts, than with 401ks. They're just trying to get rich on, you know, predicting which foreign leader we're going to kidnap next. It's it's a it's kind of bleak. Now, that being said, Cuba is the favorite, but I do think Denmark has really good value. Yeah. So, obviously he talked about a lot there, but I want to focus in on one thing he said about how in this economy the rich can afford it, but the average everyday person is struggling and trying to come up with creative ways to make money.

[00:12:58]Essentially, what he's talking about is a K-shaped economy, which refers to an uneven financial landscape where different groups, industries, or income tiers experience vastly divergent outcomes instead of a broad unified recovery.

[00:13:14]One segment of the population or market thrives and grows which is the upward K while another struggles declines or gets left behind which is the downward K. So you get that decay ship you understand the upward Ks are the halves. The downward Ks you could say are the haves.

[00:13:34]So, highincome earners, large corporations, and investors benefit from rising asset values, robust stock markets, and artificial intelligence-driven productivity. This demographic drives premium and luxury spending powering record revenues for high-end retail, travel, and hospitality brands.

[00:13:54]Whereas the bottom of the K, the have nots, lower and middle inome Americans, often the bottom 80% struggle to keep up with persistent inflation, inflated housing cost, and higher borrowing expenses. So this group is heavily impacted by the rising cost of living, forcing them to pull back on discretionary spending or rely on credit cards. So you might ask, why the heck is it happening anyways? Why is this case shaped economy or recovery recovery occurring? Well, there are several compounding factors that drive the widening economic inequality. First, asset versus wage growth. While wages have seen some growth, the wealth of upper income households has skyrocketed due to investments in financial markets and real estate. So, just give me if you think about it like this. Even if you make a high income, let's say, and you've made, I don't know, $200,000 for the LA on average for the last five years, you might think to yourself, oh, $200,000 is a lot, which it is, but let's say it stayed relatively flat. But because you've earned that $200,000 and you kept your lifestyle relatively below your means, you're able to invest a lot of your income into the stock market.

[00:15:04]Well, the stock market's had a record highs over the last three, four, five years. So therefore, your wealth, even though your income or your wage, let's say you're a high paid earner like a doctor, your wage has pretty much stayed the same, 200,000, just like someone who makes $50,000, their wages stayed relatively the same, 50,000, just for sake of example. However, your wealth on paper has grown because your house, especially if you bought before 2020, your house, your house value on paper has gone through the roof, literally.

[00:15:34]and your value in your stocks that you've bought have also increased dramatically. So, you are much wealthier compared to those who maybe earn a lower income who have also not seen much wage growth, but they haven't had the same ability to ability to invest in real estate or the stock market. And so their wealth has either flatlined or declined.