I know squidward also works at a burger joint with a cheapskate boss but SpongeBob does well for himself. And art supplies aren’t cheap. Is it actually canonical that they’re poor?
I mean yea okay, they aren’t stacked sure, but I cannot remember any episode that showcased financial struggles for either character that didn’t involve Mr. Krabs.
And thinking about it, squidward’s hobbies are way more costly than SpongeBob’s, mainly because SpongeBob uses his imagination constantly and a fair few of them involve nature. Squidward creates art through various mediums.
Edit: just remembered there indeed is a relevant episode that’s been turned meme with squidward begging out of a cardboard box. I’m completely forgetting what happens but pretty sure he’s fine by the end of it and again, that’s just one episode. Don’t think it’s canonical that he’s always close to living in that box, otherwise he wouldn’t just keep making “bad” art that no one buys.
Oh shit that’s the dime episode? Right right, so even then, that’s involves Mr Krabs being such a cheapskate (and a wrong one at that) that squidward quits. And he’s back to working by the end of the episode.
How expensive could SpongeBob’s neighborhood even be? It seems pretty far from downtown and the street doesn’t exactly have the nicest houses (their neighbor lives under a rock)
And it’s most often depicted as just those 3 houses on their “street” that seems like it’s in the middle of nowhere. Can’t even see downtown most of the time from outside their houses iirc
I once read a fan theory that because Spongbob, Patrick, and Squidward live in basically scavenged objects (stone head, pineapple, literal rock) compared to the rest of Bikini Bottom's buildings that are actual construction, due to the bolted sheet metal look. Meaning the trio just found whatever crap was lying around to make a house outside of town, kinda like a hooverville.
The only exception to this is Mr.Krabs lives in an old anchor, however given his character it is reasonable he also found some cheep junk to like in to save money.
But then again, maybe were all over analyzing a children's show.
Oh we are 100% over analyzing a cartoon about a bunch of silly sea critters 😂
But you do have a good point about the homes themselves. But to me, that just speaks to their resourcefulness rather than financially struggling to the point of taking whatever they can get their hands on to make a home (besides Patrick, he’s a starfish, a rock is plenty for him lol)
And Patrick isn’t even really depicted as poor, just lazy and dumb. And he’s perfectly content doing absolutely nothing when SpongeBob isn’t around. I have no idea how he pays for all his food tho, but there’s lots of it so unless he’s a secret thief, he’s got money somewhere
Fish society doesn't actually need money, they work fast food because they like it. Mr. Krabs has his own thing going on, maybe he somehow learned about human economics and thinks that's how fish function
It's also a popular theory that their financial difficulties is just their absurd annual income (working at a power plant, owning the denver bronchos, etc...) breaks even with their absurd spending
If you're a nuclear safety inspector in a rust belt town willing to be so housepoor you need to take a second job to buy your kids Christmas presents, you can afford a house like the Simpson's today, no problem.
I've also seen theories that Mr Burns pays him an absurd amount of money to make sure he stays, because if the cheap power plants ever have a serious problem all the blame and consequences can be tossed to Homer.
That is one of the few things that has stayed consistent over the years, despite Homer being qualified when he puts his mind to work he will always be the scapegoat of the company, i wouldnt be surpised if Burns didnt put him at the owner of the central like he did to that one parrot just to have his back covered.
Bit of a tangent but it’s fucking hilarious seeing lore-based discussions about Family Guy.
I don’t think the writers have cared about canon for like 25 years, it’s basically a sketch show. Every episode they seem to acknowledge how lazy and nonsensical they’ve become.
But because FG is popular with tweens on YouTube Shorts nowadays, ”plot holes” and ”out-of-character moments” are still being talked about.
Kids, you’re 100% putting more thought into the show than anyone currently working on it.
I could see that kind of discussion happening over American Dad because that show actually has things it cares about but Family Guy? It’s been pretty clear that Family Guy abandoned continuity for well over a decade.
If Homer was making something like $40k a year, which is possible given his job title as a nuclear inspector, it’s not entirely out of the ordinary that he could buy a house like that after a few years.
My parents bought their house in the early 90s for about $90k, and apparently they were overpaying (they just really liked the area). It’s a pretty normal suburban house too, not that different from the Simpsons’ place, and my dad was making even less than $40k.
Fast forward to today and that same house is worth well over $800k. Meanwhile, I’m making over twice what my dad made at my age, and even then, there’s still no way I, or pretty much anyone I know in my age group, could afford something like that even if we saved for years.
That’s the real difference between then and now.
Edit: the kicker is that even if we did save for years to build up a proper down payment for an $800k house, by the time we finally had the money the price would probably have jumped to $900k or even $1M.
Edit 2: Back in 2019 I was eyeing a house for around $250k and started saving up for it. By the time I finally had enough for a decent down payment, the pandemic was well in full swing and most of the houses in that area had nearly doubled in price. Now they're close to $600k. It's absolutely nuts here and I'm genuinely considering moving just to find... something.
My ex and I own a house. It's a HALF OF A DUPLEX and it is currently valued at $800K.
We bought it 5 years ago from his mom for 525K (the lowest she could reasonable drop it), and she gifted us the down payment from the sale. There is no way we would have been able to buy this place without her help. At the time we bought it, out household income was about $150K and we barely passed the 'stress test' for the mortgage. And, the mortgage is much lower then renting a similar place in our area. If we rented this place out, we could probably do so for about 3000-3600 a month, our mortgage is 2600.
Now, because of this, my ex and I are both trying to somehow cohabitat in the house because housing is f-ing insane here, and we split because he is a jerk to me so its not exactly fun for me.
Jesus. I'm really sorry to hear about your situation, and I hope you're doing okay!
The fact that you and your ex are basically forced to keep living together because housing is this insane just shows how broken the situation has gotten.
There's a fun trope in sitcoms where writers base families off of their own experiences, so it's always outdated by a generation or so.
The writers and creators of The Simpsons in the early 90s would have grown up in the 50s and 60s. When it was common for a single white-collar worker to own a house, support a stay-at-home wife, and raise multiple children.
People will tell you that The Simpsons reflects the better economy of the 90s, but even back then double-income households had become commonplace. The show was reflecting the norms of 30 years earlier.
The Simpsons then takes this problem and cranks it up to the maximum because it's run for almost 40 years. In today's world, their lifestyle seems a complete fantasy because it's so, so far removed from the experiences it was based on
A famous example of this is Charles Dickens was born 1812 and was a formative child when Mt. Tambora erupted causing several years of extra cold winters in England. Lots of snow.
He remembers London being snowy during Christmas as a child, so his idyllic Christmas is one with snow and he wrote that into his stories.
There wasn't any snow in the 1840s in London when A Christmas Carol was set; it was rainy and cold; not snowy.
Due to Dickens the image of Christmas as being snowy is set in pop culture.
The explanation is that he lives in Springfield, famously a shithole. Houses in Detroit are similarly cheap, with the added benefit of not living in Springfield.
Some admittedly lazy Googling says Homer's job almost certainly pays well over $100k, probably even $150k+. I think their house is probably pretty accurate.
I mean the Turner parents are certainly not financially responsible. Could be making a good income and just spending it all with no savings on frivolous things. Plus the, from memory, very often injuries the three family members sustain surely bleeds money due to hospital visits.
They're frequently referred to as middle class. They're better off than Chester's family (who live in a trailer park), but significantly poorer than the rest of Timmy's peers
AJ has a secret lab in his room that probably cost a hell lot, and the other prominent characters at Timmy's school are the rich kids. There's also Remy, whose parents are millionaires (billionaires?)
On the adult side, Dinkleberg always one-ups Timmy's dad on accident by having nicer stuff, but his household is double income no kids (where DINKleberg comes from), so it's likely his income is the same as Mr Turner's
The Turners are fine, but everyone else in Dimmsdale is rich
80s sitcoms families, three kids, a cat, a dog, only the father with a job stopped to study at the high school: "Oh not, we only have an suburban house with 7 rooms, a garage and a garden and can't get a new better car and a have a vacancy at the Hawaii... We are so poor. "
2026 young couple with a pet rock, they both had 2 jobs, three degrees and a little help from their parents:
Many sitcom families that were under a Disney network were also contractually obligated to have a “go to Disney” episode as well. So families that were generally not well off somehow had the money to take their kids lol
Disney park costs have also significantly outpaced inflation since the 90s. They used to be a lot less fancy without all the different monitization packages and focused more on kids and not deep pocketed Disney adults.
Except the Simpsons do a decent job at backing this up.
Homer’s job is good paying. He wouldn’t have it without a college degree these days but it would have been seen as a very good job in the 80-90s run especially.
His largest expense, his house, was paid for with help from his dad.
No childcare expenses as Marge is a SAHM.
Don’t have to save for Bart’s college as he won’t likely be going, Lisa will get a full ride through scholarships. And Maggie is a baby so that’s far away enough to ignore.
Have to agree, a Nuclear Safety Inspector would be expected to earn a pretty healthy salary. Certainly compared to other sitcom dads who are working basic retail or blue collar jobs.
The Waterson’s house, The Amazing World of Gumball
This is a strange example as the internal layout doesn’t match the external image, but there’s a full sized basement, second floor, and attic, along with a dining room + kitchen combo, laundry room, 3 known bedrooms (although only 2 show up an are talked about in most instances), and a full bathroom. In the backyard, there’s also a decent sized shed.
Granted, the family is poor mainly because Richard bought a star back in the 90s to early 2000s, along with the fact that he metaphysically can’t work, but still funny.
And also the Star was supposed to be an investment for his kids, but Richard clicked on it before it finished loading, where it was revealed to have said "his children's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren's children"(9 generations). And when they tried to get the money back, the company became bankrupt. In which, Richard tries to hide it from everyone. Really sad.
It still messes with me that the upstairs window in this shot is their bedroom window, even though most of the time their bedroom is depicted as being up the stairwell at the right of the front door, take a right at the top of the stairs, end of the hallway - which means the window either couldn't exist or would have to be on the house's left side.
id say that looks like an average florida low income house (yes the real house is in florida) but given the suburb (mr Robinson's house is very different) it might be worth more
Yeah there’s a bit where Peter goes to “pay the mortgage” which means he calls up Lois’ dad and cries until he gives in and agrees to pay it to get him to stop.
For anyone who didn't watch, here are the excuses. It's randomly revealed that Phoebe lives with her grandma, Monica's apartment is rent controlled(illegally subletting from her grandma), Rachel lives with Monica, and Chandler pays for Joey.
wait chandler just lets joey live in his apartment? why did he need a new roommate when joey moved out then? also seems like an unbalanced relationship but whatever
The real answer is that the writers didn’t add that in until a later season. But the in-universe justification is that Chandler didn’t always pay for Joey - he gets a new job in S1 or S2 that (apparently) dramatically increases his pay, so at that point he might reasonably have started paying for the whole place.
He gets a new roommate when Joey moves out because he can’t stand to be alone.
I like the fan theory that, given that she's a professional chef in New York City and given her episodes of mania, Monica is most likely a coke addict and that's where all her money goes.
Do they ever explain Phoebe’s living situation or is it implied that she’s making it as an artist?
Monica and Rachel are using the rent controlled apartment thing and Joey is just mooching off Chandler who they build out as a very well paid NYC finance professional.
Can’t find a good picture but for a struggling divorced dad in a blue collar job, Tom Cruise’s character in War of the Worlds has a really nice and large house aside from the busy urban area.
I get 4 people were sharing it, but that New Girl loft was out of all their price range. Teacher, a coach, a bartender, idk i think Schmidtt was the only one with money.
That's correct: It was a converted industrial space, and Scmidtt was the only one with money, but they were supposed to contribute; it's just that they usually did not. They're also breaking the rules by having too many people in that space, as Schmidtt (presumably) had it remodeled illegally from a 3-bedroom into a 4-bedroom space.
Aside from Nick, however, they're not usually entirelypenniless, and the estimate for the rent on that space (about 2,600 square feet) would have been around 4k back then (2011) or 6k now, depending on how much lower the rent gets based on the barely functional utilities and maintenance of the building and how lousy the local property is. Given what we see of the landlord, it is likely lower, and maybe some of the units are still zoned/furnished for commercial use.
Split 4 ways, that's like $1,000-$1,500 a month for the 6k estimate or $2,250 a month for the 9k estimate, so it's not outrageous, especially if you consider that Schmidtt is knowingly subsidizing his friends living with him and makes good money, but has bad spending habits so who knows what he's paying to keep them there.
It is kind of interesting because when it is actually berated moderately well, people still bitch about it because they want to ignore credit card debt being a large factor.
How is this so low on the comments? Should be pinned at the top. A single-earner household who works at the equivalent of a Payless shoe store who was still able to get a home with 4 bedrooms, 2 car garage, backyard, hand out money to his kids and wife, and was still considered "broke".
There’s a term you see in agriculture that applies here, rich in assets but poor in cash.
Yeah, they own a house but struggle to keep up with the mortgage and have a hard time finding hobbies. They have a net worth of half a mill but make 50k/y.
You used to be able to buy a house with zero down, and it wasn’t THAT long ago.
The Sinclair’s live in a decent sized house on a single income. Despite the fact that Earl’s best friend, Roy, works the same job and lives in a 1 room apartment.
Oh, not just died. A prolific serial killer lived there, who would not only cut his victims' bodies into pieces, but also stack them up in piles according to body part.
I actually think they did a good job with them. They go on very few vacations, have very few luxuries and often explain any they get. Like I believe they got a huge discount on the waterpark tickets and still left Dewey because they couldn’t afford to bring him and they had a very cheap babysitter.
They didn’t get magic home remodels that took a week and are professional quality or a ton of new stuff. A lot of the home set remained the same.
Hal’s job, his second job i guess, actually made some money too, he just lied, never worked fridays and spent money on them.
Also it is a two bedroom house, they get things like a new fridge from Lois’s parents and remember didn’t they also literally got and used a CC in Malcom’s name that they put debt on.
The only faults are realistically they’d probably have like 4 times more lawsuits and im sure like most shows their “donated” wardrobe is too nice.
I’m sure Reece either stole hundreds of dollars or products for his hair from the kids he bullied, cause no way the family would be constantly buying him the product needed for some of his hairstyles.
I don't think this is that unrealistic for the time. Both Hal and Lois were working, the boys mostly wore hand-me-downs, a lot of the furniture seemed to be pretty old and worn, and the kids all shared one bedroom.
It honestly reminds me of my childhood where we lived in a decent but older house and couldn't really splurge or go on family holidays, but we got by okay.
How is this unrealsitic? It's a 2 bedroom 1 (secretly 2?) bathroom house. Hal works a low paying office job and Lois fairly hard. They got the house when Hal had a higher paying job so of course they are going to struggle to keep it. They also hardly ever eat out and regularly eat left overs. It tracks that they're poor
All these examples plus the most famous example (The Simpsons) are an indication of how the wealth gap has changed in the US over the last 50 years. Until around 1985, a two story home with considerable yard space was considered the bare minimum for middle class. You could buy one on 1 non-college degree required job. I mean look at Back to the Future. His family is implied to be struggling and they're living in a gasps small 1 story house with attached garage. Butch Hartman and other animation directors at the time (Jimmy Neutron, etc.) were definitely calling back to that era.
This is only somewhat true. You can find critiques of how these families could afford these homes going back to when they aired. The bigger factor is that having a larger house with more rooms and a yard gives more room for the writers to work with.
Now having said that, today even owning any home is a sign of a little wealth, and that’s certainly an indication of the housing crisis and wealth disparity today. And most modern sitcoms are focused on workplaces rather than the home as a result.
This mf lives in a * Leaf themed house *, often goes on international tours, doesn't have a fucking job, spends all day cleaning, chasing bugs or lying around, when not touring.. iirc, in a few episodes, he's broke.
He's not just "broke" : In the original series, he's pretty much unemployed ! IIRC, later seasons imply that he might have inherited his childhood home...
There's nothing to say that Bandit's job is part time, only that it's very flexible aside from occasionally having to fly out to Longreach at the last minute, or be away for field work for 6 weeks.
(Kids: "You're always at work!" Bandit: "I'm never at work!")
One of the shorts implies that he's relatively famous in his field for a major fossil discovery (a femur from the first dog to walk upright).
I have to defend squidward's house here for a simple reason
Squidward is poor, but likes to appear as high class, both to others and to himself
his house is a Moai statue, statues that were carved from tuff and rocks, spongebob's house just dropped in one day, but Patrick and Squidward's houses were already there, and what do they both have in common? they're both rocks
Due to his self centred nature, despite being a genuinely talented multimedia traditional artist, squidward ONLY partakes in drawing, making, sculpting and generally creating his own likeness, something the house notably also shares
Squidward bought a cheap ass stone and carved its appearance and interior into what it is today HIMSELF in an effort to mask his low class status
The Weasleys from Harry Potter. They are canonically one of the the poorest wizarding families, but they can still just magic their way into a huge house, and somehow manage to pay for a massive wedding by the end of the series
I remember finding this amazing place on zillow, full house with a couple of sheds on the property, right by the ocean, plenty of land, the only issue was that it was like 1.5-2 hours from anywhere where one could conceivably find work.
But wizards can just teleport, so the Weasleys probably live in the absolute middle of nowhere and Arthur just teleports to work
They also have the wedding at the house and I would assume that magic would cut down on costs significantly... also Fleur's parents probably kicked in
I wonder how much of this is duo to the USA economy? This artists spent their childhood in suburban houses, but by the time the cartoons were being made, they probably spent a long time grinding for money
All of these shows that depict struggling families living in a nice house are almost always sitcoms.
Roseanne was probably more of a realistic show from that era depicting a middle class family, who struggled occasionally with bills but got by. They lived in a decent sized house but they also lived way out in the suburbs in the midwest.
I can't believe people are really arguing about what a Spongebob character's home should realistically look like based on their financial situation. This is a show with an ongoing feud between a crab and a piece of plankton, bubbles can literally be bombs (or anything else really), and a Squirrel from Texas lives underwater with them.
1.5k
u/FactsNLaughs Mar 10 '26
I know squidward also works at a burger joint with a cheapskate boss but SpongeBob does well for himself. And art supplies aren’t cheap. Is it actually canonical that they’re poor?