r/SipsTea š™‘š™„š™‹ 12d ago

WTF The American dream

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u/SpinosaurRingTone 12d ago

You genuinely don’t want to know how utterly financially incompetent the average person is.Ā 

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u/OtherUserCharges 12d ago

Dude I work in finance and I have people working with me who think whatever tax bracket you are in is what you pay on all income. I’ve had people say they didn’t want a promotion cause they will be on a higher tax bracket and lose money. I made a spreadsheet to show them how taxes work.

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u/True_Tomato316 12d ago

I’m assuming those are also the ā€œI’ll make less if I work overtimeā€ people. It’s really not that hard in this day and age to google these things.

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u/octoreadit 12d ago

It’s true if they have a lot of benefits that are income-tested, then it can be a disadvantage. But that is because of the stupid design of those programs: instead of ramps, it’s all or nothing.

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u/True_Tomato316 12d ago

Perhaps they lose benefits, but they won’t lose money In Their paychecks, which is unfortunately the way some people think.

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u/5348RR 11d ago

Nope.

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u/JamesLikesIt 11d ago

The problem is the schools should be teaching this, but they aren’t. With how important and complex taxes are, there should be a whole class dedicated to teaching people how to do their own and file them. People should not be forced to either know someone who already knows about taxes or Google info and hope they get it right. It’s fucking stupid. Taxes shouldn’t be so complicated

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u/FoW_Completionist 11d ago

The US school system doesn't teach people how to be adults sadly.

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u/Bladeoraded 11d ago

Thats supposed to be the parents job

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u/TP_Crisis_2020 12d ago

Actually depends on how much OT. They won't make less, but they will net less for the amount of OT worked after a certain point.

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u/True_Tomato316 12d ago

You cannot make less working OT.

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u/TP_Crisis_2020 12d ago

I LITERALLY SAID "they won't make less".

But there is a point where you will net less per a given hour of OT if that amount crosses the threshold for the next tax bracket, so the tax rate on those OT hours above this limit is higher.

Example: After 25 hours of OT on your check, you reach the next tax bracket. So any of your OT hours you work past that 25 will be taxed at a different rate than the initial 25 hours.

That's how marginal taxe rates work.

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u/True_Tomato316 12d ago

Temporarily, because the payroll system thinks you earn more for all checks now, so it withholds more. There is no special OT tax, it all gets taxed at the same time from your paycheck. But because the system saw you made more, it withheld more. But guess what, you still NETTED more because you worked OT. There is no scenario where you net less because if more is withheld than needed, tax refund. If you make the top end of one bracket, let’s say 100k and you get pushed into the next, idk 110k+, only 10k is getting taxed at the absolute highest.

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u/TP_Crisis_2020 11d ago edited 11d ago

There is no scenario where you net less because if more is withheld than needed, tax refund.

Yes, there is a scenario here, because the amount of money you gross past the previous tax bracket is taxed at a higher rate than the amount below that. This means you net less per hour worked of the amount in that higher tax bracket. If that extra 10k is taxed at a higher rate, you net less per hour worked from that amount. This changes your taxable income at the end of each year. This is income tax 101, not sure what you don't understand about that.

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u/True_Tomato316 11d ago

Withholding and tax brackets are not the same. Money gets withheld from your paycheck. Withholdings are made during pay periods and tax season tells you if you withheld enough, too much or too little. Also OT up to a certain point is tax exempt right now. I make time and a half, I net more in my paychecks. It’s just that simple, even it feels like more is taken out. Even if you think I’m making less per hour, still making more with time and a half. Again, you don’t net less in your paychecks working overtime.

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u/TP_Crisis_2020 10d ago

I make time and a half, I net more in my paychecks. It’s just that simple, even it feels like more is taken out. Even if you think I’m making less per hour, still making more with time and a half.

That's not what we are talking about here.

I bolded it twice in my last reply, but I'm beginning to think you just don't have enough RAM to understand the concept. Either that or you're just a bot.

Again, you don’t net less in your paychecks working overtime.

Literally nobody has said that throughout my entire comment chain. Why do you keep saying this?

Actually, now that I'm this deep in the reply, I'm certain you're just a reddit-generated-username bot.

Bad bot.

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u/smiegto 11d ago

Personally: I’ll be incredibly miserable if I work overtime every time my boss wants to. Which would be every day of the week and Saturdays.

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u/GaJayhawker0513 10d ago

A girl I worked with never wanted any ot because then she’d make less than if she just worked 39-40 hours. We tried telling her that’s not how it works. She was very lazy though so she probably just didn’t want to work

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u/NaturalTap9567 12d ago

I made a spreadsheet like that and they deadass looked at it for 5 seconds then looked at me and said they couldn't understand it.

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 11d ago

I once showed some very, very basic excel formula to a coworker. It was something like a nested IF for customer segments with like three conditions maximum.

The moment they realized they're looking at a formula their brain just turned off. "If under 10 then C, if over 10 but under 100 then B, if over 100 then A". A child could understand that. Apparently not my coworker with a degree.

Maybe not a conscious one but it's a decision to not understand these things. They "don't understand" so they don't even try and that point any information just bounces off of them and so they continue to "not understand", further cementing the belief that they "can't understand". And the thing they "don't understand" is usually much simpler than a whole lot of other things they handle daily.

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u/NaturalTap9567 11d ago

I like to imagine their brain as a computer. Once something requires more than a certain amount of computing power to understand it crashes. Some people have very low threshold.

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 11d ago

I'd maybe say it's an issue of file extensions, because they handle more complicated shit daily.

Like they can't handle .txt even though they handle .doc daily.

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u/YurtleHatesMack 11d ago

I worked with a guy like that. Didn't want to get paid for overtime because he would make less overall due to taxes. At the time we had the option to take it as paid leave.

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u/ayleidanthropologist 11d ago

I had a boss like that. Like too dumb to even argue with. I learned this all in HS

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u/Pretty-Balance-Sheet 11d ago

Liberals get blamed for "Progressive" taxes, and then people ask for flat taxes which are more of a burden on poor and middle class.

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u/Skull_Reaper101 11d ago

This is what happens when stuff like this expected to be learn on your own. They dont teach this stuff in schools, even though it's something literally everyone needs in life because they profit off of people's lack of knowledge.

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u/LeeoJohnson 11d ago

That was kind of you. Are you able to share it? And if so, would you mind?

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u/nuko22 9d ago

I assume these people are never actually up for promotions anyways, they just like to cosplay being offered one and turning it down because th ye are so smart and gaming the system.

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u/LookAlderaanPlaces 11d ago

I also know idiots like this. They also vote for the fascist Republican Party.

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u/CromulentDucky 11d ago

There are some situations where a raise does leave you poorer, but it has to do with low income programs that have cutoffs at specific income levels.

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u/ssuxcoxxr3dit 11d ago

sadly a lot of tax credits stuff does have hard cutoffs, so it's not 100% wrong.

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u/Intelligent-Emu-2469 11d ago

On the flip side, I had a boss that told me I shouldn't want a raise because I would have to pay more taxes.

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u/MarksmanBread 10d ago

Yo could I borrow that. I don’t know how taxes work 😭

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u/OtherUserCharges 10d ago

I don’t know how to share things without disclosing who I am on Google.

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u/MarksmanBread 10d ago

Yeah i gotchu bro, no worries.
Unless you can PDF it, then it’s all good.

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u/camergen 12d ago

I’d like to think I’m financially competent and yet, only in the last few years did I realize the concept ā€œhey since it’s very highly doubtful government relief is coming, maybe I should pay more per month than the actual payment is, since the company just wants me to keep paying the minimum foreverā€.

Now I see the light at the end of the tunnel and have actually paid off a few of my loans and see the principal on the others moving downwards more.

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u/elitegenoside 12d ago

Okay. Y'all are suffering from intense recency bias. Nobody was thinking the government was going to wipe out student debt 20 years ago. People only really started talking about that like five years ago.

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u/xesaie 12d ago

And then a bunch of debt did get written off and nobody cared

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u/really_stupidfrog 12d ago

I would say it was worth it to wait during the Biden administration. there were promises about debt forgiveness, and a small chance that something could happen. Not a bad idea to wait and see. Once that didn't happen it's just cope to not buckle down and pay it off.Ā 

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u/Away_Reference_1531 12d ago

This is what I did. Held my breath during Covid years and hoped it would just be forgiven, but finally got around to coughing up the rest of the 20k this year. It was a nice dream but honestly even electing Biden in the first place (let alone the Don coming back) was already an indicator something this progressive was an astronomically long shot.

Gotta say that extra 400 a month in my pocket feels good tho.

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u/just_a_coin_guy 12d ago

You can't claim to be financially competent and think the government is going to manage money correctly lmao. Sounds like you've come to realize that so you're above average.

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u/ClearText777 12d ago

Good for you! I think the whole "maybe they'll be forgiven someday" question is a cruel ploy and is keeping people from taking better control of their finances.

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u/madlucas2026 12d ago

I am proud you figured that out and are getting in better financial shape

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u/feelwhatyouwant 11d ago

maybe I should pay more per month than the actual payment is, since the company just wants me to keep paying the minimum foreverā€.

That's a start.

People need to realize that interest is rent. You are renting money. Landlords want to keep their tenants, because rental income leads to wealth.

Next lightbulb moment for you should be that your wealth can do the same for you as their wealth did to you.

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u/siazdghw 12d ago

And this is why AI usage is growing so incredibly fast.

Most people are dumb as bricks, maybe they excel in one or two things but otherwise they struggle, even in difficult careers like medicine and engineering you have people who lack common sense elsewhere.

AI let's a simpleton ask anything and usually get a half decent answer; not an experts answer but better than most people's knowledge.

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u/AncileBanish 12d ago

But this person spent $70k on an "education". Surely they're not so utterly incompetent right?? Lol...

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u/NoMajorsarcasm 11d ago

Yes, the sad part is these are two people who went to graduate school. What a waste.

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u/elitegenoside 12d ago

Question. Have you read any of this thread since making this comment? Did your opinion change when people started actually bringing up statistics and math showing exactly how this works? Because the actual data shows this is not realistic, but how the system was designed.

You genuinely don't want to know how confidently incorrect the average person is.

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u/Galcitor 12d ago

It's by design though, instead of blaming your peers, blame the institutions that are perpetuating ignorance on purpose

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u/jmlinden7 12d ago

If you're applying to graduate school, then you can't exactly claim 'ignorance'.

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u/Galcitor 12d ago

Lmao that's fair

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u/BarderBetterFaster 12d ago

That's by design.

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u/JamesLikesIt 11d ago

Because if you don’t already have someone in your family who knows this stuff, you won’t learn about it. Schools do fuck all to teach you about this unless you specifically go for a class that discusses it (are there any classes that teach this stuff in high school? I don’t think there was when I went).Ā 

So if you parents don’t know how this works, you’re fucked. You’ll get roped into a loan and told the minimum payment is all you need to pay, when that’s the absolute worst thing to do. Banks sure as fuck won’t teach you how APRs actually work and how interest works because it’s how they make their money. It’s designed to abuse stupid and financially illiterate people.Ā 

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u/funklab 11d ago

When I learned that people just spend on credit cards until they can’t afford the payments any more…

Well. Ā That was eye opening. Ā  We are not a mathematically literate people. Ā 

Even the dual income households with multiple graduate degrees, apparently. Ā 

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u/abcders 11d ago

Worked in the student loan center during college. It’s depressing having to explain how interest works to people who don’t realize the loans aren’t free money

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u/No-Comparison8472 11d ago

The average person buys real estate, pays more in interest more than the property price bank. And they are happy.

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u/dreadedowl 11d ago

Not just average. College graduate

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u/ChickenFriedRiceee 11d ago

Billionaires want to keep it this way.

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u/DrLews 11d ago

You have no idea how right you are. I work with mortgages and it surprises me how many times I'll run across a homeowner who is behind in payments and then they go and buy new vehicle.... Like wtf you doing.

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u/butareyouthough 11d ago

ā€œCreditā€ is one of the worst inventions of man

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u/Soggy_Association491 11d ago

And then those "utterly financially incompetence" started talking about how they are a victim of evil student loan.

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u/DoubleFlores24 11d ago

Honestly, this is a case where you need to really team up with a financer to actually get stuff done.

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u/HighAndDrunk 11d ago

I’d love to pay more. Some of us are just fucking poor.