The Latest from the Woe Street Journal…The HENRYS!

The Latest from the Woe Street Journal…The HENRYS! www.watchdogonwallstreet.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yes, we got the latest from the Woe Street Journal. Yes,
the Woe Street Journal. Another day, another acronym, Meet the Henrys.
That's right, I'm not making this up. It's almost every
day they got some new acronym for woe. Well, the
henrys here. Henry's are what basically people that are stuck

(00:42):
on a hamster wheel. High earner, not rich yet. That
is the latest acronym from the Woe Street Journal. Fifteen
years ago, if you told April Little that she'd make
three hundred thousand dollars a year, she would have pictured
a life free of financial stress, the white picket fence.
I have the whole visual in my head, says Little,

(01:04):
thirty eight years old, a human resources executive turned career
coach in Rochester, New York. I don't want to sound ungrateful,
but when I got to that proverbial mountaintop, I realized
there's a lot of expenses and I still don't own
a home. WHOA, it's like again, I'm sorry. My bull

(01:25):
excrement meter is running pretty hot right now. She says
she makes three hundred thousand dollars a year as a
career coach in Rochester, New York. Yeah, I'm not buying that.
I'm not buying that anyway. She says her multiple six

(01:48):
figures is it's tough, carries ninety thousand dollars of college
and grad school debt. Again, she makes three hundred thousand dollars. Again,
that might be her revenues. I don't know. Something done
that up here. But then she talks about the cost

(02:10):
of child care and education for her three children. She's
making the husband play the mister mom. Husband decided the
better option was for him to leave his radio job
to parent and homeschool full time. Okay again, and they're

(02:31):
talking about how fourteen point four percent of US households
bring in two hundred thousand dollars or more a year,
near a record. Yet the money doesn't have the buying
power that it used to. Why would that be, I
don't know, ge Whiz. It might be that the government
decides it wants to subsidize child care, wants to subsidize healthcare,

(02:54):
wants to subsidize college education, now wants to subsidize housing.
What happened when you subsidize things, well, the price goes up.
It's exactly what's gonna happen. I mean, you can't doubt
that will happen. And you take a look the average
price of a home now compared to other years, and

(03:14):
it's not even close. The Wall Street Journal says the
essence of being a Henry is feeling a gap between
what you have and what you think you need to
be comfortable. What these high earners consider essentials might be
termed luxuries by the rest of us. But it's also
true that it takes more money to feel rich these days,

(03:36):
and their great fear is becoming a hen re h
nre high earner not rich. Ever, here we go, We've
got another anecdotal story here. Attorney Joshua Siegel doesn't expect
sympathy as he motors around Los Angeles and as Lexus
suv he just figured out forty having risen to partner

(03:57):
and chair of a transactional tax group. He might be
driving from a house he owns to a country club
where he's a member. Instead his occasional golf outings take
him from his rental home to a public course, and
he talks about the cost of raising kids in one
of the country's most expensive cities. And he says, well,

(04:18):
you know, a lot of people in my circles come
from wealthy families, and their parents gave him money for
down payments. He's a son of an electrician and a
dental assistant, so he's feeling like he's treading water. Here
we go another one. Monica, a forty year old financial consultant,
says she and her husband have a net worth in

(04:39):
the mid seven figures, but you won't breathe easy until
she has that eight figure net worth and talks about
the daycare for her two year old, taking a thirty
thousand dollars bite out of the family budget. Man, things
are tough out there. The Woe street journal finding us
another acronym. More people be upset about listen. I deal

(05:04):
with these Henry's more often than not, and my experience
is they live outside their means. And it again in
today's day and age, keeping up with the Joneses and
social media has been put on steroids. It is what

(05:28):
it is. Number nine on my watchdog on Wall Street
Markowski Investments guide to financial independence is you have more
money than your neighbors and they don't have a clue.
Watchdog on wallstreet dot com.