I can believe that several people in media wanted a nice, big disaster for ratings purposes.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few individuals that welcome destruction that harms DeSantis politically, or at least creates an opportunity to tarnish his political reputation.
But thinking an entire industry is hoping for a disaster strictly because they don’t like a governor…that’s the kind of paranoia that I’m coming to expect from today’s GOP.
I think there’s a disconnect in that because the tax rebate is the feds, and the mandates are at the state level. Perhaps CA will offer something for folks who can’t afford, say, a $26k Bolt or whatever. I’ll be curious to see if someone can crack the $20k mark for a decent EV in the next few years.
Ok, well the adults are the decision makers, but yes they do have 3 dependent children. The kids aren’t the ones managing the money though… the grown-ups are.
I didn’t verify your assertion that $24,000 is the minimum income to avoid Medicaid. But the max income for the max EITC certainly exceeds $24,000 for three OR two kids (although the max EITC for two kids is lower), so if your statement about Medicaid is accurate then it seems that there is a window where folks with multiple kids can be simultaneously rich enough to avoid Medicaid and poor enough to get the max EITC.
Based on what I know about their hobby jobs, $24,000 seems like it’s in the right ballpark for their combined income.
Yes, the entire FIRE system is about exploiting our current system to take advantage of benefits that were intended for others, like YT said.
That’s for a family of 2.
(FPL for 2) x 1.3 = $18,310 x 1.3 = $23,803.
With additional information …
(FPL for 5) x 1.3 = $32,470 x 1.3 = $42,211.
Slightly more than the minimum would be: $24k for two and $43k for five.
EITC for $43k for 2021 is $3,030. I can’t find a 2022 EITC table, but eyeballing factors it might be $3,300 this year.
I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or serious, but certainly taking advantage of Obamacare subsidies is part of it. I’m not sure about EITC. But a Google search of “health insurance FIRE” turned up several dozen articles and the few I clicked on all listed “get an ACA policy in retirement” as their top suggestion. 
Hmmm, well they have Obamacare for sure because they were quite concerned about it when Trump was elected. Maybe they’re pulling enough from retirement each year to get up to $42,212 or whatever that year’s cutoff is. They’re certainly not earning that much. Oldest kid is in college… if there’s a way to game it to not count the oldest for Obamacare and count the oldest for EITC they’re probably doing that. (Oldest might be getting health insurance through the school???)
But even if oldest counts across the board and they’re at $42,212 their EITC would be $3,572. Not terrible and way more than $510.
2022 tax & EITC tables here.
I’d never actually looked for data. I pulled this from the Financial Samurai guy, who claims it’s from LIMRA, I didn’t validate it. And it’s super high level, particularly for the older groups - could be a fair amount of disability in there, or people retiring with older spouses. And people who retire at 55 or 60 aren’t milking the ACA subsidy for nearly as long as the poster child FIRE folks who retire at 35.
At any rate, if this data is right… oh, it’s not. There are two ‘age 50-54’ groups. Crap. Let me see if there’s source data somewhere.
Lots of people retire in the 60-64 age range. The hard part is how many of them have finances arranged to live well while reporting low incomes. And, among those people, how many are explicitly getting under the ACA cliff.
But, Googling, it turns out the cliff doesn’t exist anymore. Eliminating it “temporarily” was part of a covid package, and it has now been eliminated through 2025.
I would also suspect some/many of the age 60-64 retirees might be folks with govt benefits like Tricare coverage. Maybe a few of the old legacy jobs with retiree medical. And let’s face it, a lot of people retire with pretty low assets, so many people aren’t gaming the system to keep income low, they legit have low incomes.
I was more interested in the age 50 and under data. And despite the fact that they reported two age 50-54 buckets so you can’t really tell what the hell is going on in there, it seems reasonable to conclude that yeah, the cohort of people you read about on the internet retiring at 40 isn’t that large.
Another good Republican leaving their role in public service.
GOP continues its idealization of Russia in its campaign ads.
Agree, that’s likely begot of privileged childhood/family. I know someone who was given I think $15,000/year to avoid estate taxes from a dying relative.
However, going FIRE in your early 40s is not ridiculous without children. Kids are a money pit. Worth it to many but a significant pitfall if you want to be independently wealthy.
@Lucy I don’t remember the best person to ping but this Republican thread has gone far off rails and belongs in Finance IMO.
I’m a fine person to ping. But I haven’t been following this thread, and don’t want to read all of it. Can you tell me about where the finance stuff began?
Or are you suggesting the whole thread belongs in finance?
Not even close. They both paid for college themselves and they attended the same very average public high school.
But husband had a very lucrative career in IT and they live a very modest lifestyle. Zillow pegs their home value at probably about what his annual salary was when he was 40. Most people spend WAY more than that on their forever home, myself included. In fact, going back and looking at what the Zillow value was back when he was actually 40, I’m quite sure that the house was then worth less than one year’s salary for him.
They drive Hondas and vacation means camping in a state or county park and they’re not paying their kids’ college tuition either, reasoning that they both paid their own way so their kids can too.
It’s not the lifestyle for everyone, but everything they have they worked for. And they’re people of faith and I know that they tithe. That’s not very much these days, but when husband was working it was a lot.
My first thought on this was that the EITC essentially refunds their payroll taxes of $3,229. So the money is nice, but it is not a big bonus on top of their income.
However, doing some more looking, it appears that for 2022, $1,500 of the child tax credit is refundable. I think they only get it on two kid, but that is still a bonus of $3,000.
I’ve read that privately owned gas pumps don’t make a big profit, either. The reason is that gas pumps are attached to convenience stores and all the profit is in the merchandise.
It seems that privately owned recharging units would have a similar dynamic. Not identical. Most of their business would be from people making longer trips so the business would be a restaurant.
These stories are always intriguing. When I was a young actuary, I was earning more than my father had and substantially more than my step-father. Our actual spending was about a third of my gross income (treating mortgage interest as “spending” and mortgage principal as “saving”). I dropped out of a phd program to become an actuary, and told myself that if I really wanted to, I could probably pick it up again much later.
Never happened.