Posted on 02/10/2024 7:03:50 AM PST by Phoenix8
Nearly half of Americans have $500 or less in their savings accounts, an amount that leaves them vulnerable to unexpected expenses, according to a GOBankingRates survey of 1,063 U.S. adults conducted in November 2023.
About 29% of respondents have between $501 and $5,000 in their savings accounts, while the remaining 21% of Americans have $5,001 or more.
Few hold much cash in their checking accounts as well. Of those surveyed, 60% report having $500 or less in their checking accounts, while only about 12% have $2,001 or more.
The lack of cash in either savings or checking accounts suggests that many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. This leaves them vulnerable to unexpected expenses, underscoring the importance of having an emergency fund, if they’re able to build one.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
When we were young and poor, we had pittances in a classic low-yield passbook savings. With good credit, a sudden need for cash wouldn’t have been a problem. Nowadays, anyone can get a credit card to boot.
When I was in high school they had business math but it was basically for the dummies. No one who was on a college track ever took it. I’ve never used algebra or geometry, all right not never, but I sure could have used some of that information, I had to learn it all on my own.
Savings account?
It is also the rich paying health care costs and whatever else you may think sin taxes do reduce consumption.
The chasm between median and average speaks to great wealth disparity.
It’s even worse when you’re old and retired. COL raises don’t help cover inflation. My “savings” had to be closed because the bank started charging me a monthly fee for not having enough in it. Such is life.
Geez I’d have beaten those numbers in 1995 and a buck was worth more back then. How do people live that close to catastrophe? I mean five bills or even twentfive hundred bills can be wiped out today by one (1) visit to the car mechanic alone.
I saw cigarettes the other day in a convenience store priced at $11.29 a pack.
How can anyone afford that?!
By the way, credit card balances have reached an all-time high of $1.13 Trillion with an average interest rate of 20%. Defaults are also way up, around 25%.
Emergency unsecured loans with annual interest of over 50% are also way up. The working poor are getting buried.
“Sin taxes do reduce consumption.”
Sure—but at the end of the day it is the poorest people who pay the high taxes.
Go visit a “tobacco store” or a “convenience store” and watch who is paying the insane prices for cigarettes.
Btw most health care costs are in the last six months of life—whether those last six months are when you are fifty and die of lung cancer or you are one hundred and everything fails at once.
One of the biggest problems is financing lifestyle with debt. Most of the people I know don’t carry a balance on n their credit cards, but oddly enough some in the same general circumstances do. In one case the guy and his wife seemed to have no fiscal sense at all. He made six figure salary and was frequently complaining about being broke. However, it turned out that poor spending decisions were their family values. Example 1. Expensive vacations- went on a two week vacation to Hawaii with wife and 2 kids. Put it on the plastic. Example 2. Car buying. His older car became increasingly more expensive to fix so he decided to replace it with a newer but still used car. OK decision so far, BUT after he left the dealer he had two almost identical used cars because “his wife didn’t like him getting a “new” car when she didn’t.” Example 3. Sending both kids to expensive private school. Where he lived the public schools weren’t the war zones that they are in black Democrat dominated parts of GA. When he occasionally tried to rein in expenses wifey would double down. He realized what they were doing was not in their best interest, but wasn’t sure what to do about it, but from what I heard the wife didn’t really care. Both needed to sit down with a financial advisor but didn’t want to.
Many don’t keep too much in their bank savings account and have it invested elsewhere but I suspect they mean total savings everywhere.
Glenn Beck cited a study yesterday about inflation that said that almost everything is 33% higher in price than when Biden took office - despite the media and government claiming the ‘rate of inflation’ has cooled and the ‘job market is better than ever’ (sure, if you want a part-time job and/or like competing with foreigners) - while wages have increase ≈ 4%.
One look at my grocery and utility bill tell me this is true.
“Federal stats show since October 2019, foreign-born workers gained 3 million jobs, native born lost 1.4 million”
https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1746929670308671524
Understandable that people are “living on the edge” -my neighbor told me that he’s had to dip into his 401 to pay his mortgage (after losing his job at age 60).
We are headed for a Revolution with this wealth inequality.
The fact is, the Democrats have always been the Party of The Rich, depsite their rhetoric.
The rich are doing great under Biden.
LOL, I remember my dad telling me when my husband and I bought our first house that it was going to be a “money pit” and expect it to be so. It is ALWAYS something, isn’t it?
Last week, my windshield was hit by a rock on the 110 freeway in LA. It didn’t come through the window, Thank God, but cracked it but good. New windshield was $800, after we called around, dealer wanted $3500 (deductible for insurance was $1000).
My dishwasher is about to give up the ghost and I’m sure I’m looking at $1,000 - it has been repaired beyond its usefulness. I just had the trees cut back on the property and that was thousands of dollars -who knows what next month will bring?
You already did your roof?
inflation is cumulative - just because the rate has diminished slightly (if it really has) doesn’t mitigate the effects of the earlier runaway inflation caused by Democrat (and in some cases Republican) fiscal irresponsibility.
And don’t forget scratch off lotto tickets along with beer dope and cigarettes
“...many of those with less than $500 cash always seem to have money for cigarettes, alcohol, and dope.” and Starbucks!
Because in the end, all that money winds up in the hands of the Oligarchs.
Businesses ask how you are going to pay before they install. When they asked me how I said by check, they just said, “Oh.” I think that they have deals with banks for time payments or loans.
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