hey YouTube Alex here coming to you today from hot Yi Thailand I'm in the middle of a corn field so let's get into it I'm making today's video because I saw that Financial Samurai actually fell out of fi
and I'm fairly certain he's in like Boulder Colorado I thought why don't I talk about why Financial Independence is harder in the west the first reason is the consumer culture in the West for those who are from the
US you can attest to this the consumer drives Western economies Western economies have generally turned away from manufact facturing and are now dominated by Services either Services B Toc directly selling to consumers or B2B selling to other businesses
many of which also sell to Consumers the consumer economy is often telling us that we're inadequate that the way that we can feel good about ourselves is to purchase something a good a service new car a nice house
I rarely hear that oh I'm a collector here in Southeast Asia it's just not as common you don't hear about the massive car collections you don't hear about Pokemon card collections you just don't hear about this obsessive consumer
culture like in the west drive-throughs are still not a commonplace thing here you occasionally see them in Japan or in Thailand but it's not every business is designed for you to go and get your food as quickly as
possible McDonald's is a great example of this where they do the majority of their business through drive-thru now people like it it's efficient but it costs money one of the central tenants of the fire movement Financial Independence Movement
is that people overpay for convenience alongside that people often work hard to attain some physical thing oh I'm saving up to buy a house which having a house is an external multiplayer game I want to buy this fancy
car that's beyond my means this consumption culture is to the extent that people lose the joy that they get I remember in a job that I had in the past where I mentioned to a manager that this is
going to be my first time having a fine dining meal and I was really excited for it I thought that there'd be some sense of like oh hey man good on you you're going to have this great experience
it was more like a smirk like this is your first time at X years old to have a luxurious dining experience it was like almost this sense of oh better try harder if you're only going once it doesn't
really count you better be doing this all the time it was an enjoyable experience but I don't base my value on how many Michelin stars I've collected funny enough my first Michelin star experience was in Bangkok where I
had a Michelin star experience for I think it was like a dollar or a dollar 50 something like 50 bot 40 bot something like that really cheap not an exclusive experience Beyond just being able to get to Thailand
but nonetheless it's not really a thing I brag about a lot I think this is the first time I mentioned this on my channel but that's part of that consumer culture where you're judged based not only on your
consumption but how you can keep that consumption up I've even heard from some Western people oh you're not really living in Thailand unless you're eating in the finest High restaurants you're staying in the nicest hotels it's bringing that
consumer culture here and projecting it onto the culture here which is not so extreme in terms of consumption in my opinion in the west it feels like there's no shortage of things to spend money on where here in
Thailand I basically cover my food my transportation and my housing but I don't need to buy lots of stuff I don't need to buy lots of formal clothing I don't need to buy fancy jewelry there are stores that
offer these things here but it doesn't seem to be as much the norm and now in the west to be more efficient they've cut the retail store out you just sit at home and click on your computer it
gets brought to your house which once again feeds into that consumer culture make it as easy as possible to spend money number two the number two thing that makes Financial Independence difficult in the west is the high taxes
and I know some people will feel that this is controversial I'm not getting into the merits or non-merits of high taxes only to say you can't really opt out in the west if you're from my home state Tennessee
you're not going without a car and a car is one of the most heavily taxed things that you can own not only is the vehicle taxed you're paying a yearly tax some states is based on the value of
the vehicle you're also paying tax on the oil changes on the tires on any kind of replacement parts you're paying mandatory insurance it's not something you opt out of that doesn't get into property tax if you own a
home or you're paying rent you're paying property tax so I guess your response to that could be oh well just go be a homeless person but we all know that that's not realistic for most people most people do
not want to be a homeless person so for the purposes of this video it's irrelevant when it comes to the vehicle aspect if you want to maintain a job you're going to keep paying for that vehicle so what
seems like high salaries when you break down people's lifestyle expectations and desires it gets chipped away right it gets chipped Away by all the things you have to pay and you have to make a lot just to stay
afloat just to maintain a normal lifestyle I know the next step would be people to say oh go move to San Francisco or go move to New York City where you don't have to have a car and I
did that I moved to the Bay Area had several different Great Tech jobs really enjoy the opportunity there not everybody can just drop everything and move I mean San Francisco barria is the most expensive expensive city in the
United States easily one of the most expensive in the world and it's not something that most people have the finances set up in order to just drop everything and move there you need a certain education you need certain
connections you need certain skills and those skills are rare and that's why those jobs pay a lot number three is artificial inflation and I've talked about this in several videos before but with the culture of nimbyism you have
artificial inflation in terms of Housing and some people say it doesn't matter my house is is paid off it doesn't matter that your house is paid off when it comes to the wages of the people that provide you
Services fast food workers have to have a place to live people that do service jobs have to have a place to live and so when the prices of those things artificially get jacked up then that translates into more
expenses for everything else this artificial inflation would be able to be mitigated if there was a reverse of the nism but there's a lot of incentives to keep this policy up to continue to restrict these Supply housing this
in and of itself wouldn't be an issue but with the mass immigration policies there is more and more pressure exerted on the housing market making it more and more difficult for young people especially to get on the property
ladder many feel that the property ladder has been yanked up from under them I mean I have friends that have roommates well into their 30s I think that America is moving toward a renter culture and there's going to
be consequences that come with people not having the pride of ownership not feeling like they're B based in a certain Community for a long time I know my grandparents lived in the same house for like 40 years I
just don't see that as being common for large swaths of the population in Western countries number four and this is going to be a sore subject for some people it certainly applies to me but you have both broken
and small families families where people cannot rely on each other can't really trust each other there was some kind of substance abuse or personality disorder at play and so they're more atomized than ever this especially affects the lower
classes of people with the rich they could just go spend the money to deal with problems but with the poorer people they benefit a lot from sticking together from being able to rely on each other for help whether
it be babysitting getting a ride getting worked on in their car whatever it may be less welltoo people really suffer from broken families now you've got tons of people coming from broken families and this is great for businesses
right I mean if you have a couple that gets a divorce you're not selling them one house you're selling them two no longer can they have a family car they've got to each have a car and this goes
on and on down the list somebody who's working all the time as a single person I can relate to this I'm not as often able to go out to the grocery store and cook things for myself as an
individual it can be just as costly to cook for one person as several so I end up getting takeout which of course eats into my budget because I don't have family to rely on I can't just go over
to Mom or Dad's house and have a home-cooked meal I've got to figure out a way to eat in an efficient manner and it just becomes this rigoll where you have economies of scale and you can't distribute work
among multiple people it really makes it harder for people to move toward Financial Independence because they're having to spend money inefficiently I can relate to this I paid well over $100,000 in rent in my lifetime not solely because
I want to live in other places but because it was either pay rent in my hometown at 18 years old or pay rent in another city the fifth reason that Financial Independence is harder in the west is dating
I haven't really got into dating a lot in this channel dating is expensive in the West you look at the cost of movie tickets 14 bucks a piece 15 bucks a piece in the Bay Area you talk about
the price of a meal an entree is easily $ 20 $30 you talk about wanting to go out to a concert 30 40 bucks you're paying 20 bucks for parking by the end of it you spent several hundred
for one date that may or may not pan out right if you're if you're unsure about the person or the person doesn't like you you just threw money away that's something that's much cheaper here in Southeast Asia I've
had dates that cost very little money our meals together cost a total of $3 or4 movie tickets were 4 bucks a piece if we wanted to go to a temple they could get in free I pay a small
fee and so it's much more accessible when you are outside of the West and you live in countries where they're not trying to extract the maximum amount of money for every possible thing they can you also have economies
of scale where something like 2/3 of the men in the west are single companies have less and less incentive to appeal to couples or dating I mean you know your audience is limited to like a third of men
it's to harder sale like I don't have any interest in dating in the west that's not going to change and they know a lot of guys feel the same way so they had to shift their targeting around where
here in Thailand I see people on dates all the time I see couples all the time it's really cool to see that and knowing that those couples are encouraged by Society to be together is wonderful so that's another
saying that's the fifth reason fi is harder in the west is yeah you can be financially independent unless you're really well too you're going to struggle in the dating Department the expectations of Western people when it comes to
dating are so high that most people struggle a lot most people really struggle with that and I don't see that changing anytime soon so let me know what you think down in the comments has this video been helpful
did you enjoy the cornfield backdrop I'd be happy to come back here and film while I'm here in Hai also do you disagree are any of these points nonsensical to you always happy when people respectfully disagree with me
let me know what they think about my opinions if you would please give us a thumbs up it really helps with the channel subscribe to the channel as well we just hit 800 subs today so hopefully we'll get
to 1,000 in the near future that's my goal right now I think around 15% of you subscribe to the channel greatly appreciate if you do subscribe thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time
