Posted on 03/30/2015 10:32:15 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
Brother, can you spare a nickel? For roughly half of American households they answer is "barely," according to the results of a new survey by Bankrate.com. About half reported they are setting aside no more than 5 percent of their income in savings. One in five said they're not even able to save a penny.
The highest savings rates were reported by those in the middle of the income ladder; more than a third of households earnings between $50,000 - 75,000 said they're saving more than 10 percent of their incomes, a higher rate than those in the highest-income bracket. Only a quarter of those surveyed are setting aside more than 10 percent of their incomes, including one in seven who said they are saving more than 15 percent of what they make.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
That seems to be the general rule. There was a news article a few days ago, a McD's female worker in Oakland who welcomed the increase in minimum wages. We were all led to believe these workers were suffering from poverty and starving, couldn't make their rent, etc. The girl commented that she was happy at last and would buy an iPhone with the extra income from the minimum wage increase.
I know people barely getting by, in debt and complaining. But I glean information from conversations, and always find that they are spending money on luxuries they really don't need. One guy is skinny and complains he can't afford food; yet he spends a fortune on comic books every month ($4 and up each) as well as on movie DVDs. As you say, little sympathy for most of these cases. Live within your means and you can generally afford to save something.
I guess you missed the post where I indicated no one wants to hire a 57 year old white male. No one even gives me an interview. I do have a part time job. I make about $1500 a month from it. That’s about a $1,000 short of my mortgage payments.
I also posted earlier that I am not looking for sympathy or advice. This exchange is getting way too deep in details. I am simply pointing out that people can find themselves in difficult situations, and getting out of them is not always just a matter of using positive affirmations or buying a self help book.
I might add that governmental policies that favor those who don’t bother to try don’t help much either.
consider also raising your deductibles on your auto and home insurance. That will save you probably a few thousand a year.
Growing up, at my first job in a grocery store, I’d routinely see customers using food stamps get into a one or two year old Cadillac, fully loaded.
How many of those too-poor-to-save houses have smart phones for every family member, television cable or satellite packages, the latest gaming equipment, new cars in the driveway, brand-name clothes in the closets, motorized toys in the garage, beer and soda and manufactured food in the refrigerator?
I know too many families on the financial edge with all of the above.
I disagree on the 57 year old male thing. I’m that age and I get offers. But you made the proper point that we “dig ourselves into holes”.
The problem isn’t that you are 57 and having trouble with income. The problem is that you are 57 and you dug yourself into a hole. People do that all the time. Forget the cheese, let me out of the trap.
I have led a boring life but that was by choice. I don’t need any more money. If I did, I know where to get it. My sister is one paycheck from homelessness because of all her “payments”. That is her decision. She has a nicer car and cell phone than I do and she has a nice camping trailer that she can’t even pull with her car. That’s the hole she chose and she doesn’t want to hear about it.
I rarely meet people who say to me “How can I get out of this hole I dug?”. Mostly they ask how they can dig it better or live more comfortably in it.
The most important thing you can do at 57 is convince people like my sister not to dig those holes. Write down every bad decision and why it was bad.
Sidenote: Every day, I beat myself up over how I treated my kids and they tell everyone they had a great childhood. I have to constantly remind myself not to do stupid stuff.
I think it is reasonable to expect even teenagers working a minimum wage job to be able to put aside $20 each week.
Now if an 18-year-old was able to set up an investment account and have the discipline to feed just $20 a week into it for the next 40 years, he would have over half a million dollars (based on a 10% annual return over those 40 years.
Now 10% may seem overly optimistic for many but I've been in my 401(k) plan for 30 years and I've averaged an annual 11.38% return on it over that time.
But let's say that you want to play it safe and invest only in balanced and fixed funds that average 5% a year return. Well then you can still achieve the $500,000 mark by putting in $40 a week over 40 years. Which should be achievable for most.
The majority of employees in my company do not take advantage of the 401(k) and the company match up to 6%. Now think about that. If you work at my company for 40 years and you put in 12% of your income on a average $60,000 salary (6 from you and 6 from the company), that's about $140 a week you are saving. So in my example above, you are building $3.5 million in wealth at 10% return and $1.75 million with just a 5% return.
They just don't see that they are giving up a relatively painless way to wealth.
Well, my family WASN’T in this situation before Obama & Holder came to power.
But, of course, I’m in a “demographic” that was SUPPOSED to be hurt by his policies.
Shall I send you the list of job applications I’ve submitted since 2009 without getting any interviews?
Our government has the same problem.
How else can you pay for your tats, manicures, hair extension, Louis Vuitton bags, big screen, cable and other essentials? If you’re saving you’re not a player!
I don't know what you did for a living up to now but if you are able-bodied (and your mind is obviously sharp), there are no doubt some options for you. Depending on where you live, you might want to consider moving to an area where there is more opportunity.
I'm close to your age and I recently moved to the NYC area, which I never saw myself doing when I was younger. But I want to be where the opportunities are, just in case I do lose my primary job.
You might want to look into "crowdsourcing", especially if you have a skill set that would be of value to start-up companies that are not looking to add to their payroll. These are basically "project-based" jobs that go out on the Internet and you sign up for them.
Good example is that my wife was a COBOL programmer for many years and also has experience with other computer languages. On the various crowdsourcing sites, guess what, there are various projects out there that she can work on from our home. She either bids for the whole job or for a piece of it and gets paid accordingly. It's not steady work but it can be lucrative work.
The potential for crowdsourcing is limitless. Uber is a perfect example of crowdsourcing. Somebody needs a ride from here to there and you fill that need for a fee. That's another reason to live in a bigger city. Tons of opportunities to make money just driving your car.
There is a new start-up that is doing the same thing with package delivery. Let's say you have a commute from Stamford, CT to White Plains, NY. You drive that route every morning. Now, you will be able to ferry packages back and forth to those destinations. On your way to work, you might deliver one or two packages. On the way home, you might deliver 2-3 packages. You get paid $4 a package or about $20 a day. Now you just got paid for your gas and then some.
What I'm saying is that there are huge opportunities out there to earn income. The traditional "job" as we know it is going away.
I do feel sadness for people who ARE working and can barely manage to buy necessities. I don’t feel sadness for the ‘takers’, who don’t even try to support themselves.
It’s a different ‘era’. When I was young, my husband and I had one car for years. We bought one big item at a time and paid it off before buying again. Plus, we saved. That’s how you become well off and able to even pay cash for things and even your cars.
The young couples both work nowdays, but they immediately buy fancy houses and everything to go in them in one fell swoop and get into deep debt. Jobs cannot be counted on to last forever, as they once were, and if one of them loses their high paying job they are in trouble. I’ve read the stories and that’s what has happened to many of the homeless!
Dave’s TV show probably saved my marriage. My wife finally realized she had a spending problem and went to counseling. Now she is a rabid non-spender. We’ve been debt free for about 5 years now, still working on the 6 months of expenses.
Guaranteed? FDIC? Instant liquidity? No risk? I’m talking old passbook savings. The FED has propped up the stock market to the exclusion of practically any other savings plan.
No because it has too many reasons. I’m current on technology and I can do old school code so I get contacted all the time. We hire people my age all the time because we can speak English. But a lot of them say “I’m too old to learn anything new”. We recently lost a programmer because he didn’t want to learn Java/Groovy/Grails.
But the problem isn’t employment. The problem is the hole. If you could get out of the hole, what would you do differently? When I think about cashing in and going for the big bucks, I remind myself that people did that and lost everything.
For men, job is everything so we tend to fixate on it. We tie our worth to our job. It becomes our grindstone. I am a perfect example of this mentality. I will die at my desk, just like my father.
Side: My wife asked me how we could get more money and I told her to get a full-time job. So she did. We broke 6 figures for the 1st time since 1998 when we took a 65% paycut to come here.
Of course not. With risk comes greater opportunity for returns. But bonds tend to be a whole lot less volatile than stocks.
Congratulations.
I’m working on finishing off the emergency fund (again) and starting up the retirement plan again.
I’m investing in a mutual fund, my work’s 403b plan, PTO, and I set aside a few hundred dollars in a savings account every month.
We didn’t do things in the order Dave does. We both kept putting money into our retirements. It was the spending, not lack of income in our case. Once the spending was under control, the debt snowball was easy. We are also paying extra on the mortgage. If everything goes well, the house will be paid off two years before retirement. (10-12 years approx).
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