Fermsy

credit score has a system that:
Punishes you for checking your own credit.
Punishes you for closing old accounts
Punishes you for opening new ones.
Punishes you for using too much of your limit.
Punishes you for not using it enough.
A number between 300 and 850 determines:
Your rent. Your mortgage rate. Your car insurance.
Sometimes your job.
Nobody taught you how it worked.
But it’s been working against you since you turned 18.

You will pay into Social Security for 40 years.
$9,000 a year.
$360,000 total.
Out of your paycheck. Not optional.
Your return?
Maybe $2,000 a month at retirement.
That won’t cover rent in most American cities.
Now imagine that same $360,000 invested in an index fund for 40 years.
At a 7% average return?
$1.8 million.
Same money. Same 40 years.
Completely different future.
But you don’t get that choice.
You fund a broken system whether you trust it or not.
And then they wonder why younger generations have checked out.

Nobody talks about how parents are paying more for daycare than they paid for college.
The average daycare : $1,500/month.
That’s $18,000 a year.
To go to work.
You go to work to pay someone to watch your kid while you go to work.
And if you don’t work you can’t afford the daycare.
And if you don’t do daycare you can’t go to work.
It’s not a choice. It’s a trap.

My boomer dad swears he raised a family of 4 on one salary.
So I handed him my grocery receipt.
$340. For one week.
He looked at it like it was written in a foreign language.
Then said “you’re buying the wrong things.”
Sir that’s eggs, bread, chicken, milk, and vegetables.
The wrong things are apparently just called groceries now.

I pay $500 a month for health insurance.
My deductible is $6,000.
That means I pay $6,000 a year just to have insurance.
Then $6,000 more before it actually kicks in.
That’s $12,000 out of pocket before insurance saves me a single dollar.
I am not insured.
I am pre-bankrupted.

“just buy a used car” they said.
so here’s what a used car looks like in 2026:
2015 Honda Civic — $14,000
2016 Toyota Camry — $16,000
2017 Ford F-150 — $28,000
these are used cars.
with 100k+ miles.
that need work.
a new car in 2010 cost $28,000.
the advice didn’t change.
the market did.
and now people are signing 7 year loans on used cars they didn’t want just to get to work.
“just buy used” was solid advice.
it died somewhere around 2021 and nobody updated the script.

You can’t afford a house because interest rates are too high.
But interest rates are high to fight inflation.
Inflation happened because corporations raised prices.
Corporations raised prices and called it “supply chain issues.”
Supply chain issues are mostly resolved.
Prices never came back down.
You’re still paying for it.
They already made the profit. Nobody got held accountable.
And somehow this is your fault for not budgeting better.

I was 22 when I signed for my student loans.
I didn’t fully understand interest. I just knew I needed the degree to get the job to build the life.
So I signed.
Now I’m in my 30s. I’ve paid $400 every single month without missing one. I’ve sacrificed vacations, a newer car, a bigger place.
And my balance has barely moved.
I did what they told me to do.
I went to school. I got the degree. I got the job. I pay my bills.
And I am still drowning in the same debt I had at 22.
Nobody warned me it would be like this.
Nobody.

nobody talks about the mental load of being broke in an expensive world.
doing math in your head at the grocery store.
checking your account before you swipe.
saying “i’m good” when someone suggests going out.
skipping the doctor because the copay isn’t in the budget.
this isn’t laziness.
this isn’t poor decisions.
this is millions of people just trying to survive a system that was never designed for them to get ahead.

$1,000 used to be an emergency fund.
now it’s a car repair.
or two months of groceries.
or one ER visit after insurance.
or a plane ticket home for a funeral.
we didn’t get poorer.
everything around us just got more expensive than $1,000 can fix.
and they’re still out here telling us to save more.