My son works full time here in Florida. Let me run his numbers. State minimum wage is $14/hour. He's at $15. 40 hours a week = $600/week That's about $2,600/month before taxes. Florida has no state income tax the thing they sell you on. So after federal and FICA he takes home roughly $2,200. Average one-bedroom in our area runs about $1,600. That's 73% of his entire paycheck gone to rent before he eats a single meal. Leaves him around $600 a month for: - groceries - gas - car insurance - health insurance - phone - emergencies - savings Car insurance alone eats a third of that in this state. He works 40 hours a week and cannot save a dollar. Not because he's careless because there's nothing left to be careless with. I spent thirty years paying off a house here. He's doing the same job I did at his age and he can't afford a one-bedroom. That's not a discipline problem. That's not avocado toast. The floor moved and nobody lowered the ceiling. Working full time should cover a roof. In Florida it barely covers the rent on one.

In 2008 Elon Musk had $0 left. He had poured his entire $180,000,000 PayPal fortune into SpaceX and Tesla. SpaceX had just failed its third rocket launch in a row. Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy. His marriage fell apart. He lost his house. He was borrowing money from friends just to pay rent. In an interview that year he broke down in tears and said: “I never thought I was someone who could ever be broken. But 2008 broke me. I just didn’t know how I was going to make it.” Three months later SpaceX launched successfully for the first time. Six months later Tesla closed a financing round on Christmas Eve, literally hours before bankruptcy. Today SpaceX is worth $350,000,000,000. The people who told him to save his money and go sit on the beach are watching.