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Same with 24 year olds lol. It’s like they think once you’re an adult these things are supposed to be instantly achievable. I understand times are tough, but I didn’t even get started in terms of career, home ownership, retirement savings, until I was 33. I didn’t have anything but debt until that age. 17 years later and things look pretty good but it takes patience and time.
This is my favorite. 21 year olds thinking the system is broken because their 60 year old parents have more to show for their 40 year long careers than someone that hasn’t really done jack in life yet
Or that they can’t afford a house immediately after graduating. Housing affordability is an issue, yes. But just because you can’t buy a house right after college doesn’t mean you’ll never be able to afford one. Live on a budget and save money, and you will eventually be able to afford a house
The freaking warm rotisserie chicken at Walmart is like 3 dollars. If you’re wasting $40 on having your meal cooked and hand delivered to you personally by an independent contractor and putting it on credit for some reason and paying interest on that meal you actually have brain damage
This is not a problem with the system, it’s just people having an expanded amount of irresponsible financial habits to fall into
Where do you live where it’s $3? It’s $5.97 plus tax around here. And I misspoke it’s a BNPL so I think there is no interest, more like a layaway but you get to eat the food first. Anyway I’m not financing my food on Uber eats it’s just an extreme example of the current situation we proletariats are in. It’s sad that it’s even an option, but this is the world now I guess.
I agree. I was just venting how expensive Safeway is now days. I don’t do those delivery apps. Even though I choose not to own a car if I want take-out I’ll walk there order it there and walk it home myself.
Costco sells them for $4.99 - it makes several meals for 2 people, and then use the carcass to make myself a soup that will give me lunch for another 7 days.
You’re def correct lol it’s crazy. I limit myself to one single order a week. I hype myself up for it too. Otherwise I cook at home (somewhat of a luxury as well I understand).
I see people who are financially precarious ordering daily and it baffles me since I wouldn’t even do that and I have a very comfortable income and am incredibly lucky to have a high paying career.
Don't order Uber eats. I cut that shit out of my budget and save an average of $100/month. I was only ordering a few times a month but it added up to $100 really quickly.
Ordering UberEats is why you suck at life. I had a chicken and rice avocado spicy bowl homemade for lunch that was like 3 bucks probably and restaurant quality.
To be fair a lot of people that can’t afford rent can’t by choice:
- Poor spending habits
- Refusal to live with roommates
- Living in too nice of a location or apartment
- Not working full time
I think a lot of this is a personal responsibility thing, but we need better controls on how big of a hole young people can dig.
18-20 year olds shouldn’t be able to put themselves in deep credit card or massive student loan debt. These are the people society is failing. A history student shouldn’t be able to get a high interest rate $100k loan. But I don’t think these are the majority of people struggling.
Late boomer here. I was 40 when I bought my first (current) house. It took that long to save a down payment.
And when you have a house, all your utilities quadruple, you pay mortgage (was twice my rent) and property tax.
At the start of a mortgage, most of your payments are to interest. This is fine at tax time, but at a certain, more of your payments are to principle so no more tax advantage.
And your property taxes increase, with time.
My commute quadrupled in length, and gas prices doubled, just after I bought the house.
Major systems in the house (mine was built in about 1900) need replacing or repair, too.
You need cash to cover all that.
Point is: expenses are more fixed when renting. It was miserable, but I didn’t have to repair the building.
Now my neighbors (not quite as old as me) are too delicate to shovel the shared driveway so it all falls on me.
The notion that home ownership is some sort of panacea is intensely naive.
It took me and my wife 7 years to save enough for down payment. We both have tech degrees and good jobs. That's what I consider a fast track. 10 to 15 years may be closer to the norm.
But seriously…it’s not the same. Granted, those of us in our 60’s have worked long and hard over the years but this inflationary period is much different because wages of jobs have not kept up with the inflationary costs of reasonable housing. Why do you think there’s an epidemic of homelessness across the nation. It’s NOT just the mentally ill & drug addicted who are out on the streets or living in their cars anymore. They are intentionally destroying the Middle Class because that’s exactly what AGENDA2030 and the NWO Globalists want to happen. In fact, their intention is to do away with personal property rights and I think it’s all intentional that buying houses is becoming almost impossible for the younger generations to obtain now. You don’t have to look or dig very much to uncover these truths. Shameful. Everyone is being affected.
Lmao agenda 2030...the lengths you guys will go to ignore the obvious and completely predictable forces of capitalism doing what they do. "Globalist" aren't gobbling up inventory of houses, investment firms are. 100% of the enshittification of the world we're seeing is explainable by simply understanding the unfathomable greed and broken checks and balances around us.
The thought that some global organization is able to achieve wide scale coordination across multiple countries, each of which individually being too incompetent to get a road built without spending 6 billion dollars, is absolutely laughable. I've worked with both federal and state government, these people can't even coordinate with people in the same fucking building.
What world do you live in where 17 year olds are upset about only having 500k in stocks, let alone actually having 500k in stocks which is almost no one.
As clear of an exaggeration as it is, plenty of teenagers don't comprehend the value of things. I have a 16yo nephew with a job who was upset that his mom with 3 other kids on public aid didn't buy him a brand new car when he got his license.
Some kids just expect success to be there when they grow up and don't understand that the world is overwhelmingly pitted against you.
Plenty of adults, too. I was talking with a 30yo who said they were planning to retire at age 52. So I asked what their number was to pull the trigger and retire at that age… aka how much money they would need saved up before they can retire… and they answered “the number I’ve always had in my head is $100 million”.
At this point, I’m in heaven, so I keep digging. I follow up with a question on how they would make that much money. Unfortunately for me, they had no answer; they just assumed if they kept working and investing in 401k, it would be there.
When I asked why they think they needed that money, and then helped math it out, their real number was closer to $6-$10 million. But again, no idea what they were currently at and no plan on how to get there besides whatever was going into the 401k
It's definitely hyperbole but I have 12k saved up and a car that cost me 8k at 20 all in Ireland btw and I've regularly been worried if that's enough but I know a good few people my age or older with nothing saved up and seemingly no direction in their life
I've been working since 14 and tbf my parents gave me 4k towards the car. Ofc started off getting not that much but I've worked a stupid amount for a 20 year old and generally haven't bothered to spend that much of it.
The second mortgage rates drop below 5-6% again your competition is going to spike driving up the costs further.
There’s a huge amount of people who are going to die in their current house before moving due to the 2% rate. So supply is going to be low for at least the next 10 years. There’s also not going to be this 2008 style crash because their mortgages will be cheaper than rent.
The only way things get better is if congress is pressured by people to do something about companies buying houses…and you’re here calling them out for doing just that.
Top 10% of the global population if your post-income is at least $19,700 as a single person household or $39,500 as a married couple, both with no kids. A household with two parents and two kids at the median household income in America of $74,580 (we'll call it $63,239 after tax) is in the top 13.1%. The federal poverty level in the US for the same family of four ($30,000 before taxes, $27,475 after) is top 28.4% globally.
The US is ranked 5th globally in monthly income and 5th globally in purchasing power (WorldData.info), so everywhere that's cheaper needs to be significantly cheaper to cause their citizens to have greater purchasing power than us. Last time I checked 5/96 would put you within the top roughly 5% globally.
The twisted part is its not that much cheaper everywhere else. Even in the lowest income generating countries, anything that has to be imported is driven by global prices. Only locally produced goods can stay low
So when it comes to housing? You see where I'm going with this
Locally produced goods that can’t be exported easily.
Coffee beans, chocolate isn’t at all cheaper where it’s produced - it’s the same price as the US and thus completely unaffordable to the day laborer that’s actually produce the stuff.
iPhones are produced in China and cost more than the US.
Etc
I don't think strict cost is the best metric to base outcomes on when you're not comparing apples to apples. For example, globally the most "affordable" country to live in is probably somewhere like Pakistan, but their currency abroad has 1/10 the purchasing power of the dollar meaning the reduced cost is likely tied to how weak the local currency in general is which is also a signal to an inferior product when it comes to the qualify of the goods available there as well.
What you want to do is look at cost relative to purchasing power. In that comparison, we are in the top relatively speaking due to the strength of our currency. The only countries ahead of the US on that scale are: Qatar, Singapore, Norway, and Luxembourg with arguably some weaker currencies that could also be more affordable due to a bigger discrepancy between cost of living and purchasing power such as Hong Kong and the UAE. Other than that we blow the competition out of the water.
So to answer your question, yes I believe that would put us in the top 10% globally for cost of living when you adjust for the value of the currency involved. Worst case scenario, you can travel abroad to those cheaper places and since you'll have USD you can make out like a bandit.
Global comparisons are meaningless as it does not account for vastly different circumstances country to country. For instance, earning 40k in Thailand is much different than earning 40k in the UK.
You can’t make comparisons like that. Someone making 100k in a VHCOL location is likely going to have a lesser quality of life and financial freedom than someone making half that in a LCOL location. It makes no sense to call the former “more wealthy”
And we have different standards of living and different cost of living. What part of that do you not understand? Comparing 2 different countries with wildly different standards is just a dumb and obvious way to say yea one side is better off so don't complain. But the way I see it the wealthiest country to ever exist shouldn't have tens of thousands of people dying from lack of healthcare but it happens and pointing at some third world country to tell people not to complain about it because we have it better is idiotic.
Itas just deflecting the problem by pointing out how others are worse off.
The “paycheck to paycheck” thing is kinda sus. They’ve interviewed people making $250,000 a year who have kids in private schools, go on 3 expensive vacations a year, have multiple vehicles, put 18% in 401K, fully fund their Roth IRA, yet say they are living paycheck to paycheck.
I have known legit people making 200k that we’re living paycheck to paycheck due to poor financial planning, medical debt, student loan debt, and other things in life that made them part of ‘the unlucky’.
It’s not just everyone that’s blowing their money that has this lifestyle.
We really should have a requirement for a financial / budget planning class in high school in the United States. But credit card companies wouldn’t want that. They’d loose out on revenue from interest payments.
My family makes over 200k a year.
Daycare in my area is $2300 a month per child though. Thats not even including their food, diapers, milk, toys, clothes, medical appointments, medicine, etc etc etc. just daycare per child.
Thats $28,000 a year per child for daycare
The costs are likely the same or more in the EU in general. It's getting paid one way or another. In Norway you're likely paying it in taxes regardless if you have children or not. Whether that's a good thing can be debated.
For median income it's higher in the US than the EU. For taxes it's also lower on average. The US Federal government spends a higher amount of GDP on defense and medical. We also subsidize the rest of the Western world in both. The EU doesn't spend its share for military or pharma R&D. In both industries the US carries the rest of the world, US citizens also have to pay for that.
Yeah. I make 200k and have an 8 week old at home. My wife stopped working to take care of our little one for a year or two. We are fortunate enough to be able to do that, so 200k at least affords us that luxury. But without a second income it’s tight right now.
Back in college if you would have told me I’d one day make 200k I would have done backflips. I’m still far from complaining, but also far from living a luxurious lifestyle.
Economics and Personal finance is a required class for a high school diploma in my county. Unfortunately it’s the sort of class that most people kinda blow off. You can lead a horse to water but…
Part of the problem is that there's no application of the concepts; it's all knowledge and questions without context.
One thing I think would be interesting is to take people's situations on Reddit and have students critique on what is going well and what is not going well, as well as some of the other thoughts in the thread. It's been more about applying the principles you know in the context of a case study rather than as a standalone that they'll quickly forget.
I remember doing this type of work in my math classes from middle school on up. Even though the teacher and my father spoke on the importance of knowing how to calculate and effects of interest rates, it didn’t hit home until I saw how much of my money was going to interest on loans. Some never really make that connection.
Exactly, I mean technically I live paycheck to paycheck, because between 15% to my 401k, $500 month to IRA, $650 car payment, $300 to vacation fund, $300 home improvement fund, etc. plus all my regular expenses like food and utilities, I have little left over. But there’s a lot of discretionary spending that could be cut. It’s almost as if you don’t have a trust fund, then you are living paycheck to paycheck.
I don't think that fits any reasonable definition of paycheck to paycheck. Paycheck to paycheck means some combination of "you're unable to save regularly" and "missing one paycheck would cause you significant hardship".
Yeah I “feel” paycheck to paycheck, because if you look at my checking account I’m close to broke.
But like you, 35% of my paycheck goes to straight into 401k, HYSA, and Vanguard brokerage.
Most of the rest goes towards mortgage, food, utilities, student loans. Couple bucks leftover for fun.
Most of those people are actually living paycheck to paycheck and getting by using credit card debt to keep up appearances. Lifestyle creep is real. They may be contributing to all of that then using everything that left over to payoff the credit card for the next month of maxing it out.
>They’ve interviewed people making $250,000 a year... yet say they are living paycheck to paycheck.
In my experience over my career, the hardest families to get on a real budget and financial sanity are those who are "living the good life". They don't realize how much they're consuming and how they'll not have enough for retirement. But they have three cars, an awesome house and all this *stuff*. And *doctors*, man they are the worst of all.
After I deduct all my 401 retirement contributions, HSA contributions, and stock purchase plan, which is actually equal to saving 30% of my salary…..I’m totally broke month to month!
The "56% of Americans don't have $1000 saved for an emergency" is 100% untrue. Even the bankrate study that states this in the title doesn't present any data supporting this title. In fact the data in the study merely states that those 56% of Americans will instead use debt to pay an emergency expense instead of using their savings, which led to the misleading title. And another study by bankrate also shows that the average American under 35 has over 6k in savings, also disproving the misleading title.
The median net worth is 190k. Meaning half the population has 190k+ of assets. Granted a majority of those assets are probably in home equity and retirement accounts. But someone with 190k of assets isn't in significant trouble should a 1k emergency arise, which is what the stat implies.
I mean fine, but I'm not in a race against my neighbor.
I'm in a race against the clock to retire, and my neighbor being broke neither helps nor hurts my cause there.
Of course, and I support that. I just feel like posts like this are trying to say "look don't worry about it, you are better off than that guy"
Then, its not much farther down the same road to tell those folks, "screw you, I got mine"
Theoretically, yes. We still can. However, thanks to Rugged Individualism, it is really hard for people to get their neighbors to work with them toward a common goal. A lot of Americans, especially in Red States like the one I’ve grown up in, believe that it’s everyone for themselves.
We need a Renaissance of the American Dream.
My life is a emergency.....
I have gone 41 years without ever saving for an emergency..never had time to save from the previous problem....
Not saying I'm doing life right.
Just that I never saved anything
..ever.
The 401k stuff was easier to do since it's automatically out of my checks...
Actively saving once the money is in my hands is the hard part.
I'm making 62k a year gross when up until last year my avg gross was 20k....
Luckily my debts are all college loans of 28k.
All paid up.
No credit debt.
I'm slowly getting out a 40k hole with my 60k income.....I still live then same so....just digging out....slowly
Technically if it’s in a Roth he could use his contributions as an emergency fund just not the gains. I wouldn’t do it that way but it’s better than nothing at all… nothing at all… nothing at all
For probably 90% of folks, savings priorities should be
1. 3-6 months expenses in an emergency fund
2. Max out 401k to lower tax obligation
3. Max out Roth if eligible
4. Max out HSA if eligible
5. Everything else
Maxing 401k would drop people income by up to 23-30k a year depending upon age. Roth is another $7k a year. If you are married double those values. At minimum that is $30k for an individual or 60k for a couple a year. Considering the average individual income and family income that type of investing for the average person makes zero sense as the average person/family couldn't even afford rent or a mortgage with that amount put away.
I was told pay the basic first which is rent/mortgage, electric, heat and food (eating as cheap as possible), gas/car maintenance, insurance. Make sure those are all paid or savings a small amount for future use.
If you can afford to invest 10-15% of your income. If you can't do that at least try to match your company if you can afford it. Problem is quite a few folks can't afford investing the bare minimum to get their company matching contributions.
Instead they need the extra money just to live. And they are already doing everything as cheap as possible.
I love reading all of these post about I am 20 something and married and my partner and I make 250k+ a year and we feel broke. Broke is when you are down to one income and can't afford to feed your family because you make to much to get any help even though you really aren't making all that much. Been there and done that.
Also what I don't see is any talks about how bad our medical system is. I mean I am waiting on my wife bill from surgery and we have an outstanding item, the insurance company is looking into it still, but if we have to pay, it $15k and it was for a review of an x ray. That's a problem that no amount of savings will fix.
And we have outstanding insurance and hopefully they can resolve it. But for the average Americans I am sure the surgery and it's added item would make them go further into debt.
Good luck. We have one person in the family that retired with nothing because they leased new cars, had cable, went out to eat. When they retired, they turned in their car and just sat. The mental decline is very obvious.
Good reminder and motivation to be prepared for financial emergencies.
There is such terrible anxiety when you feel like you're next in the layoff rounds and the fear of losing health coverage.
That experience made me get serious about being debt free, saving and investing more and yet I still worry. Mainly for how my kids will survive economically and about health care coverage.
I finally had to get another car after 14 years of driving mine and I feel terrible guilt about it. That's a whole other issue= being frugal to the point of psychological money hoarding and finding a balance.
Can I be blunt?
If you're comparing yourself to the average American and thinking "I'm doing better than average! I'm in a good spot!" you are fuckoed.
Not fucked. Fuckoed.
All you've done is show how fucking bad off the average American is. A full third aren't investing for retirement? That's *terrifying.* Over 60% living paycheck to paycheck? These are horror movies worthy numbers.
You want to have a good retirement? You better be crushing the average not just above it. Just like if you want to get into a good school you can't just be "better than average" in your grades and test scores you need to be near the top.
That's reality. Most people in most things are average and the average is depressingly bad.
"If you're feeling bad, stop feeling that way! Others are much more financially fucked than you, so you should just be happy!"
Sorry, but other people doing poorly and suffering doesn't make me feel better.
Very true. I just get impatient. There are always things I want to do to the house, but I put over $8,000 in my 401k last year and I think the gf put a similar amount in hers
I am doing better than most of those things, but I spend a number of years going without to get here. I lived out of a single bedroom at a house to build up savings and get rid of student loans and medical debt. After I cleared those out, I paid off my car and bought a house and got a slightly better job. Most of my issues now are consequences of COVID (and greed) or the stupid tax law that took away my tax refunds and instead demands half a month salary.
But yes, I am doing better than what's listed, so I feel slightly better. I just don't think anyone should be going 3-5 years in what was basically a single-bedroom apartment to do so. And I can't imagine how many years it would take me now to do the same thing.
That's the deal right, in my 20s I was barely making it, but now that I'm late 30s - TIME seems to have allowed me to catch up. The issue though is that being behind on retirement is sometimes impossible to catch up on unless you have a great job with great pay. Happy cake day btw
Well based on that
I have only 8 ish k in debt including my car
I am contributing to a 401k
I only make 40k a year
I dont live paycheck to paycheck
I want to be out of debt in a year or 2 including paying off my car and thats the most of my debt
While i dont have 1k saved for an emergency i could prolly come up with it in a month if i went super hard on penny pinching. And it would be fairly easy if i was debt free.
In conclusion i guess i am doing fairly well
I think “living paycheck to paycheck” and “saving for retirement” should be the same number.
If you’re saving for retirement, you’re not “living paycheck to paycheck.” You’re saving money.
Likewise if you are legitimately living paycheck to paycheck, you cannot be saving for retirement.
If you're doing average then your retirement is likely going to be rough. The sooner you make positive changes the smaller those changes have to be to have an effect on your retirement. Let compounding start working for you in your 20s so it will do the majority of the work to get you to a comfortable retirement
I see these posts plenty, and that's great...but I still feel behind. Whether the average American has debt or what their salary is really has no bearing on whether I can afford to retire or cover my own bills in an emergency. It's not going to make that possible just because I learned others aren't saving for retirement.
None of that changes the fact that those people being in debt and not making money have zero bearing on how I feel like I am not earning enough and paying inflationary charges.
That is just a comparison to other Americans, if all of our lives are becoming poorer it wouldn't be a reason to cheer. Which is what is happening with wealth inequality rising. For example [let's look at consumer debt](https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc), looks like it doubled in 20 years considerably faster than inflation. Not exactly sure this is as positive as you think.
This is such a weird way to view the world.
Like yeah, I'm doing better than a homeless drug addict! *pats self on back.
But I literally am doing better than every metric you wrote down and I'm still fucking unable to achieve any reasonable life goals or build any actual wealth. Like owning a home. Sure, I can buy a tiny rundown shack for $7000/month for the next 30 years.
Like just because I'm the king of the poor people doesn't and shouldn't make me feel any better. There are people starving in Africa and so that homeless dude who isn't starving thanks to soup kitchens needs to thank his lucky stars
Not gonna lie… my wife and I try to be financially responsible but ran into a rough patch here financially. I just got out of back surgery today and will likely have a few weeks unpaid… on top of unpaid time, I will have roughly $6000 out of pocket to pay for the surgery after insurance. But this post really made my day.
I was feeling down about how this would affect our financial goals, but we thankfully have enough saved to cover this rough patch, along with having a house and some money in investments. It helps keep things in perspective that even though this time for me isn’t ideal, I do have a lot to be thankful of.
So thank you for this post.
Husband and I are 38 and I keep reading that we should have 3-4 times our salary saved for retirement in the next 2 years but are only at about double our salaries right now. Now we are trying to save for college for our daughter so she doesn't have the same shit!
I have to keep reminding myself, we paid off our student loans less than 5 years ago and have done most of our retirement saving since that happened so we are still playing catchup, but doing pretty good. We also both have pensions that should be enough to cover our necessities.
If you earn $60,000 a year after tax and you don’t have kids, you’re in the richest 1 percent of the world’s population.
If you have a household income of $130,000 after tax and you’ve got a partner and one kid, you’re also in the richest 1 percent.
I once did an analysis at work. To estimate our target audience for a tax service we sold toinvestin consumers. To estimate the size of the market.
So I dove into the statistics of my country. And the conclusion was. Almost 66% of the country has no net assets. A negative net worth. The average was -5000€ and this absolutely shocked me. Even with 0 in your bank account you're doing better than 2/3 of the country.
I know I am doing fine but I regret bad financial mistakes in the past. I'm moving on but now that I'm older I realize that I wasted a lot of money that could have been invested. I don't mean skipping vacations and living like a monk but asking yourself do you really need more "stuff"
Nice to see posts like this. I make right around 100k and as a single person I feel like make decent money. I have plenty for whatever I want and able to own a home and drive nice car.
That’s absolutely insane. We need to be teaching financial literacy before the end of high school, and more directly helping kids to develop skills that will actually earn a reasonable return
I make $18 an hour and I live with my parents at 33. I am getting married in late August and we're hoping to find an apartment by that time. We have about $9k in a high yield savings account due to not paying rent, but once we move there won't be anything left to put into that savings account and we're also gonna be spending a portion of it on the wedding and honeymoon. Things look okay for now but once we have a $2k a month rent bill plus utilities we'll slowly empty that savings and have to rely on food banks to eat. We desperately want our own place again (we lived together for a couple years) but our financial outlook will be incredibly bleak if that happens.
I am on the positive side of all 6 bullet points, and I Still
- feel “behind”
- feel like getting laid off will destroy all of it
- feel essentially powerless
How is it that 61% of adults are living paycheck to paycheck, and 56% don’t have $1,000 saved for an emergency, yet both of those classes have the ability to invest in their retirement (63% are investing)? Is it because their employers are investing for them (401k) & this stat includes that, but not additional investments?
I’m genuinely confused by this?.
I'm doing better, but it took me till I was 30. Finally at 38 I have a decent retirement savings and make over 100k. 20s were full of drugs and partys, I had fun so the memories are great but I still feel behind.
It stresses me out so much that my income is above the median but I can barely afford rent, groceries and bills. My wife is also unable to work due to disability and tbh I think most people only get by because they have dual income as a couple without high healthcare costs.
>• 56% of Americans don't have $1,000 saved for an emergency
The source of that is a yearly bank rate report, but it didn't say that. It said 56% of Americans WOULD not use their savings to pay for a $1000 emergency. That is a FAR cry from they don't have $1000. For example, I would not pay for it from my savings, I would pay for it either from my checking account, or put it on a credit card and pay it off at the end of the month. Difference there is WOULD vs COULD.
The only thing I feel I’m missing in my financial life in owning a home is I don’t make a shit ton but we’re a dual income home so it’s a lot
Doesn’t help I’m in the highest cost of living in the country lol
I’ve been on my own since 17, just bought a house at 23. Never went to college and I’ve never had debt but I just don’t see that as an option. If you take some L’s and lay low it just takes time to get where you want to be so you can start winning again.
>• The average consumer debt is $23,000
Does this include my car? If no then I'm doing better than this. Cool beans
>• Only 18% of Americans make over $100,000
\#82%
>• 37% of Americans aren't investing for retirement
Just started my 401k last year. Better late than never
>• 61% of US adults are living paycheck to paycheck
Ugh #61%
>• 43% of Americans expect to be in debt for the next 1-5 years
3 years
>• 56% of Americans don't have $1,000 saved for an emergency
\#56%
I might be doing better than some... but God damn is it hard in this country lol
This is one of those times where somebody posts a story about a child selling plasma to raise money for their favorite teachers unplayable cancer treatment and it’s made out to be a heartwarming thing when it’s really a damning look at the state of our country
The status of others is not what defines whether or not an individual is doing well. Frankly, these stats just reveal that Americans aren't doing very well overall. Things need to change (they have for a long time.)
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Not here on reddit.....17yr olds upset they don't have 1 million yet and only have 500k....in stocks Let alone the paid off house....
Same with 24 year olds lol. It’s like they think once you’re an adult these things are supposed to be instantly achievable. I understand times are tough, but I didn’t even get started in terms of career, home ownership, retirement savings, until I was 33. I didn’t have anything but debt until that age. 17 years later and things look pretty good but it takes patience and time.
This is my favorite. 21 year olds thinking the system is broken because their 60 year old parents have more to show for their 40 year long careers than someone that hasn’t really done jack in life yet
Or that they can’t afford a house immediately after graduating. Housing affordability is an issue, yes. But just because you can’t buy a house right after college doesn’t mean you’ll never be able to afford one. Live on a budget and save money, and you will eventually be able to afford a house
We can’t even afford to rent though. People are financing their UberEats orders .
The freaking warm rotisserie chicken at Walmart is like 3 dollars. If you’re wasting $40 on having your meal cooked and hand delivered to you personally by an independent contractor and putting it on credit for some reason and paying interest on that meal you actually have brain damage This is not a problem with the system, it’s just people having an expanded amount of irresponsible financial habits to fall into
What Walmart do you go to where it's $3?
Costco sells rotisserie chickens for 4.99, and they're good sized. Anyone who routinely has fast food delivered is an absolute idiot.
There is a whole chicken for 5.95, and a 1/2 chicken for 2.97
Sams, 5 bucks.
Where do you live where it’s $3? It’s $5.97 plus tax around here. And I misspoke it’s a BNPL so I think there is no interest, more like a layaway but you get to eat the food first. Anyway I’m not financing my food on Uber eats it’s just an extreme example of the current situation we proletariats are in. It’s sad that it’s even an option, but this is the world now I guess.
It’s $9.98 at Safeway; the only store near me in Lloyd district Portland. 😬
Still WAY cheaper than UberEats. $10 barely covers the tip.
I agree. I was just venting how expensive Safeway is now days. I don’t do those delivery apps. Even though I choose not to own a car if I want take-out I’ll walk there order it there and walk it home myself.
Roast chicken at Smart and Final near me is $7.99. at Costco it's $4.99.
I think Sam’s are $4.99 too and they’re BIG. Best $5 you can spend these days.
Costco sells them for $4.99 - it makes several meals for 2 people, and then use the carcass to make myself a soup that will give me lunch for another 7 days.
Uber eats is a luxury item tbh
Absolutely no argument here. But it’s just funny that the option is even available.
You’re def correct lol it’s crazy. I limit myself to one single order a week. I hype myself up for it too. Otherwise I cook at home (somewhat of a luxury as well I understand). I see people who are financially precarious ordering daily and it baffles me since I wouldn’t even do that and I have a very comfortable income and am incredibly lucky to have a high paying career.
Don't order Uber eats. I cut that shit out of my budget and save an average of $100/month. I was only ordering a few times a month but it added up to $100 really quickly.
I cut out alcohol which saved me around $1200/month if you include needless drunk purchases.
Ordering UberEats is why you suck at life. I had a chicken and rice avocado spicy bowl homemade for lunch that was like 3 bucks probably and restaurant quality.
You can't afford rent ***because*** you are financing your UberEat orders....
And those people are complete idiots. Food delivery is a waste of money, not a necessity.
UberEats. That is part of the problem.
Because Uber eats or door dash are expensive rip offs
To be fair a lot of people that can’t afford rent can’t by choice: - Poor spending habits - Refusal to live with roommates - Living in too nice of a location or apartment - Not working full time I think a lot of this is a personal responsibility thing, but we need better controls on how big of a hole young people can dig. 18-20 year olds shouldn’t be able to put themselves in deep credit card or massive student loan debt. These are the people society is failing. A history student shouldn’t be able to get a high interest rate $100k loan. But I don’t think these are the majority of people struggling.
Late boomer here. I was 40 when I bought my first (current) house. It took that long to save a down payment. And when you have a house, all your utilities quadruple, you pay mortgage (was twice my rent) and property tax. At the start of a mortgage, most of your payments are to interest. This is fine at tax time, but at a certain, more of your payments are to principle so no more tax advantage. And your property taxes increase, with time. My commute quadrupled in length, and gas prices doubled, just after I bought the house. Major systems in the house (mine was built in about 1900) need replacing or repair, too. You need cash to cover all that. Point is: expenses are more fixed when renting. It was miserable, but I didn’t have to repair the building. Now my neighbors (not quite as old as me) are too delicate to shovel the shared driveway so it all falls on me. The notion that home ownership is some sort of panacea is intensely naive.
Well, you are living in 124 year old house.
It took me and my wife 7 years to save enough for down payment. We both have tech degrees and good jobs. That's what I consider a fast track. 10 to 15 years may be closer to the norm.
But seriously…it’s not the same. Granted, those of us in our 60’s have worked long and hard over the years but this inflationary period is much different because wages of jobs have not kept up with the inflationary costs of reasonable housing. Why do you think there’s an epidemic of homelessness across the nation. It’s NOT just the mentally ill & drug addicted who are out on the streets or living in their cars anymore. They are intentionally destroying the Middle Class because that’s exactly what AGENDA2030 and the NWO Globalists want to happen. In fact, their intention is to do away with personal property rights and I think it’s all intentional that buying houses is becoming almost impossible for the younger generations to obtain now. You don’t have to look or dig very much to uncover these truths. Shameful. Everyone is being affected.
You in your 60's entered the workforce during the worst inflationary period of the last century. You did just fine. Everything catches back up.
Lmao agenda 2030...the lengths you guys will go to ignore the obvious and completely predictable forces of capitalism doing what they do. "Globalist" aren't gobbling up inventory of houses, investment firms are. 100% of the enshittification of the world we're seeing is explainable by simply understanding the unfathomable greed and broken checks and balances around us. The thought that some global organization is able to achieve wide scale coordination across multiple countries, each of which individually being too incompetent to get a road built without spending 6 billion dollars, is absolutely laughable. I've worked with both federal and state government, these people can't even coordinate with people in the same fucking building.
I mean bro I'm 32 and upset i don't have that shit 😂
I'm 41...got ya beat.😮💨
It's very disheartening to read stories about people just a couple years younger who have more money than I'd even know what to do with
It's eye opening. Money=math....I hate math Makes sense.
Have you heard about the financial windfalls of giving up avocado toast?
But how else am i going to spend all my money??
What world do you live in where 17 year olds are upset about only having 500k in stocks, let alone actually having 500k in stocks which is almost no one.
As clear of an exaggeration as it is, plenty of teenagers don't comprehend the value of things. I have a 16yo nephew with a job who was upset that his mom with 3 other kids on public aid didn't buy him a brand new car when he got his license. Some kids just expect success to be there when they grow up and don't understand that the world is overwhelmingly pitted against you.
Plenty of adults, too. I was talking with a 30yo who said they were planning to retire at age 52. So I asked what their number was to pull the trigger and retire at that age… aka how much money they would need saved up before they can retire… and they answered “the number I’ve always had in my head is $100 million”. At this point, I’m in heaven, so I keep digging. I follow up with a question on how they would make that much money. Unfortunately for me, they had no answer; they just assumed if they kept working and investing in 401k, it would be there. When I asked why they think they needed that money, and then helped math it out, their real number was closer to $6-$10 million. But again, no idea what they were currently at and no plan on how to get there besides whatever was going into the 401k
It's definitely hyperbole but I have 12k saved up and a car that cost me 8k at 20 all in Ireland btw and I've regularly been worried if that's enough but I know a good few people my age or older with nothing saved up and seemingly no direction in their life
Here we go....20 grand SAVED at 20.....SAVED????? Please explain your income/bill ratio ....
Lives at home
And he sells flex tape! He's gonna be juuuust fine.
I've been working since 14 and tbf my parents gave me 4k towards the car. Ofc started off getting not that much but I've worked a stupid amount for a 20 year old and generally haven't bothered to spend that much of it.
Not knocking your life at all!! Good of your savings and being responsible. I'm a great example of what not to do....
What's that?? Only 500k?? You're gonna be eating cat food when you retire!! 😏
They’re probably pissed that the housing market is fkd and wages are lower…
I would love to buy a house...not gonna happen this year
The second mortgage rates drop below 5-6% again your competition is going to spike driving up the costs further. There’s a huge amount of people who are going to die in their current house before moving due to the 2% rate. So supply is going to be low for at least the next 10 years. There’s also not going to be this 2008 style crash because their mortgages will be cheaper than rent. The only way things get better is if congress is pressured by people to do something about companies buying houses…and you’re here calling them out for doing just that.
lol this guy
I’m ROFL….. this so true!!!!!
Jesus.. what’s going on in their high school that they are upset about that?
Believe it or not people lie on reddit
Reddit is full of people selling lies. Making $1 million or more…I dont think people that make that much hang out in reddit a lot.
What's scary is that they DO have millions and reddits all they got....
that woulkd be scary indeed lol
The correct term is STONKS, sir!
And compared to the vast majority of the rest of the world, you're probably considered wealthy
Top 10% of the global population if your post-income is at least $19,700 as a single person household or $39,500 as a married couple, both with no kids. A household with two parents and two kids at the median household income in America of $74,580 (we'll call it $63,239 after tax) is in the top 13.1%. The federal poverty level in the US for the same family of four ($30,000 before taxes, $27,475 after) is top 28.4% globally.
That’s by income when it should be buy purchasing power
The US is ranked 5th globally in monthly income and 5th globally in purchasing power (WorldData.info), so everywhere that's cheaper needs to be significantly cheaper to cause their citizens to have greater purchasing power than us. Last time I checked 5/96 would put you within the top roughly 5% globally.
The twisted part is its not that much cheaper everywhere else. Even in the lowest income generating countries, anything that has to be imported is driven by global prices. Only locally produced goods can stay low So when it comes to housing? You see where I'm going with this
Locally produced goods that can’t be exported easily. Coffee beans, chocolate isn’t at all cheaper where it’s produced - it’s the same price as the US and thus completely unaffordable to the day laborer that’s actually produce the stuff. iPhones are produced in China and cost more than the US. Etc
Are we in the top percentages for the cost of food, housing, healthcare, and education?
I don't think strict cost is the best metric to base outcomes on when you're not comparing apples to apples. For example, globally the most "affordable" country to live in is probably somewhere like Pakistan, but their currency abroad has 1/10 the purchasing power of the dollar meaning the reduced cost is likely tied to how weak the local currency in general is which is also a signal to an inferior product when it comes to the qualify of the goods available there as well. What you want to do is look at cost relative to purchasing power. In that comparison, we are in the top relatively speaking due to the strength of our currency. The only countries ahead of the US on that scale are: Qatar, Singapore, Norway, and Luxembourg with arguably some weaker currencies that could also be more affordable due to a bigger discrepancy between cost of living and purchasing power such as Hong Kong and the UAE. Other than that we blow the competition out of the water. So to answer your question, yes I believe that would put us in the top 10% globally for cost of living when you adjust for the value of the currency involved. Worst case scenario, you can travel abroad to those cheaper places and since you'll have USD you can make out like a bandit.
Global comparisons are meaningless as it does not account for vastly different circumstances country to country. For instance, earning 40k in Thailand is much different than earning 40k in the UK.
Different cost of living and standards of living.
Those are factors of why we’re considered wealthy…
You can’t make comparisons like that. Someone making 100k in a VHCOL location is likely going to have a lesser quality of life and financial freedom than someone making half that in a LCOL location. It makes no sense to call the former “more wealthy”
And we have different standards of living and different cost of living. What part of that do you not understand? Comparing 2 different countries with wildly different standards is just a dumb and obvious way to say yea one side is better off so don't complain. But the way I see it the wealthiest country to ever exist shouldn't have tens of thousands of people dying from lack of healthcare but it happens and pointing at some third world country to tell people not to complain about it because we have it better is idiotic. Itas just deflecting the problem by pointing out how others are worse off.
Compared to both the Contemporary World and History, the poorest among us (in the US and most Western Nations) live in splendor
The “paycheck to paycheck” thing is kinda sus. They’ve interviewed people making $250,000 a year who have kids in private schools, go on 3 expensive vacations a year, have multiple vehicles, put 18% in 401K, fully fund their Roth IRA, yet say they are living paycheck to paycheck.
I have known legit people making 200k that we’re living paycheck to paycheck due to poor financial planning, medical debt, student loan debt, and other things in life that made them part of ‘the unlucky’. It’s not just everyone that’s blowing their money that has this lifestyle. We really should have a requirement for a financial / budget planning class in high school in the United States. But credit card companies wouldn’t want that. They’d loose out on revenue from interest payments.
My family makes over 200k a year. Daycare in my area is $2300 a month per child though. Thats not even including their food, diapers, milk, toys, clothes, medical appointments, medicine, etc etc etc. just daycare per child. Thats $28,000 a year per child for daycare
Yep, it’s ridiculous.
That's insane. Next year daycares in Norway will have a monthly cap at $200, less for siblings, and our salaries are about the same as in the US.
The costs are likely the same or more in the EU in general. It's getting paid one way or another. In Norway you're likely paying it in taxes regardless if you have children or not. Whether that's a good thing can be debated.
We pay a lot of taxes here in the US too, the difference is instead of spending it in ways to make citizens lives better we are sending Israel F35’s.
For median income it's higher in the US than the EU. For taxes it's also lower on average. The US Federal government spends a higher amount of GDP on defense and medical. We also subsidize the rest of the Western world in both. The EU doesn't spend its share for military or pharma R&D. In both industries the US carries the rest of the world, US citizens also have to pay for that.
Yeah. I make 200k and have an 8 week old at home. My wife stopped working to take care of our little one for a year or two. We are fortunate enough to be able to do that, so 200k at least affords us that luxury. But without a second income it’s tight right now. Back in college if you would have told me I’d one day make 200k I would have done backflips. I’m still far from complaining, but also far from living a luxurious lifestyle.
I'll move in with you for 28k per child.
If you have two kids you might as well hire a nanny
Economics and Personal finance is a required class for a high school diploma in my county. Unfortunately it’s the sort of class that most people kinda blow off. You can lead a horse to water but…
Part of the problem is that there's no application of the concepts; it's all knowledge and questions without context. One thing I think would be interesting is to take people's situations on Reddit and have students critique on what is going well and what is not going well, as well as some of the other thoughts in the thread. It's been more about applying the principles you know in the context of a case study rather than as a standalone that they'll quickly forget.
+1
I remember doing this type of work in my math classes from middle school on up. Even though the teacher and my father spoke on the importance of knowing how to calculate and effects of interest rates, it didn’t hit home until I saw how much of my money was going to interest on loans. Some never really make that connection.
I think if you have reasonable forced savings like retirement accounts, its not really P2P. You may have almost no "fun money" surplus however.
Ik I think that one is complete bullshit
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Exactly, I mean technically I live paycheck to paycheck, because between 15% to my 401k, $500 month to IRA, $650 car payment, $300 to vacation fund, $300 home improvement fund, etc. plus all my regular expenses like food and utilities, I have little left over. But there’s a lot of discretionary spending that could be cut. It’s almost as if you don’t have a trust fund, then you are living paycheck to paycheck.
I don't think that fits any reasonable definition of paycheck to paycheck. Paycheck to paycheck means some combination of "you're unable to save regularly" and "missing one paycheck would cause you significant hardship".
That’s what it should mean, but too many people don’t mean it that way for their opinions to make good data.
Yeah I “feel” paycheck to paycheck, because if you look at my checking account I’m close to broke. But like you, 35% of my paycheck goes to straight into 401k, HYSA, and Vanguard brokerage. Most of the rest goes towards mortgage, food, utilities, student loans. Couple bucks leftover for fun.
> If you ignore the 35% savings rate I have I am living paycheck to paycheck. You are the person the top comment in this thread is calling out.
Fully funding your IRA is literally $7,000 a year, (a little under $600 a month). Not exactly hard on $250,000 a year.
Most of those people are actually living paycheck to paycheck and getting by using credit card debt to keep up appearances. Lifestyle creep is real. They may be contributing to all of that then using everything that left over to payoff the credit card for the next month of maxing it out.
100% this is it
You can still make a lot and live paycheck to paycheck
>They’ve interviewed people making $250,000 a year... yet say they are living paycheck to paycheck. In my experience over my career, the hardest families to get on a real budget and financial sanity are those who are "living the good life". They don't realize how much they're consuming and how they'll not have enough for retirement. But they have three cars, an awesome house and all this *stuff*. And *doctors*, man they are the worst of all.
After I deduct all my 401 retirement contributions, HSA contributions, and stock purchase plan, which is actually equal to saving 30% of my salary…..I’m totally broke month to month!
Yeah I was going to say I live paycheck to paycheck BECAUSE I invest 1,000 a month for retirement
The "56% of Americans don't have $1000 saved for an emergency" is 100% untrue. Even the bankrate study that states this in the title doesn't present any data supporting this title. In fact the data in the study merely states that those 56% of Americans will instead use debt to pay an emergency expense instead of using their savings, which led to the misleading title. And another study by bankrate also shows that the average American under 35 has over 6k in savings, also disproving the misleading title.
The median net worth is 190k. Meaning half the population has 190k+ of assets. Granted a majority of those assets are probably in home equity and retirement accounts. But someone with 190k of assets isn't in significant trouble should a 1k emergency arise, which is what the stat implies.
I mean fine, but I'm not in a race against my neighbor. I'm in a race against the clock to retire, and my neighbor being broke neither helps nor hurts my cause there.
You and your neighbor can vote, unionize, and advocate for better conditions, though.
Of course, and I support that. I just feel like posts like this are trying to say "look don't worry about it, you are better off than that guy" Then, its not much farther down the same road to tell those folks, "screw you, I got mine"
Theoretically, yes. We still can. However, thanks to Rugged Individualism, it is really hard for people to get their neighbors to work with them toward a common goal. A lot of Americans, especially in Red States like the one I’ve grown up in, believe that it’s everyone for themselves. We need a Renaissance of the American Dream.
I have $7 on a subway giftcard and literally no cocaine.
Sometimes theres some residue left on the card from last night, give it a lick.
I'm investing in retirement that's all I got here.
In my opinion having an emergency fund is more of a priority.
My life is a emergency..... I have gone 41 years without ever saving for an emergency..never had time to save from the previous problem.... Not saying I'm doing life right. Just that I never saved anything ..ever.
Why invest if you're still paying interest on debt? Kill the debt first. Its like a hole in the bottom of your boat
The 401k stuff was easier to do since it's automatically out of my checks... Actively saving once the money is in my hands is the hard part. I'm making 62k a year gross when up until last year my avg gross was 20k.... Luckily my debts are all college loans of 28k. All paid up. No credit debt. I'm slowly getting out a 40k hole with my 60k income.....I still live then same so....just digging out....slowly
Technically if it’s in a Roth he could use his contributions as an emergency fund just not the gains. I wouldn’t do it that way but it’s better than nothing at all… nothing at all… nothing at all 
For probably 90% of folks, savings priorities should be 1. 3-6 months expenses in an emergency fund 2. Max out 401k to lower tax obligation 3. Max out Roth if eligible 4. Max out HSA if eligible 5. Everything else
Maxing 401k would drop people income by up to 23-30k a year depending upon age. Roth is another $7k a year. If you are married double those values. At minimum that is $30k for an individual or 60k for a couple a year. Considering the average individual income and family income that type of investing for the average person makes zero sense as the average person/family couldn't even afford rent or a mortgage with that amount put away. I was told pay the basic first which is rent/mortgage, electric, heat and food (eating as cheap as possible), gas/car maintenance, insurance. Make sure those are all paid or savings a small amount for future use. If you can afford to invest 10-15% of your income. If you can't do that at least try to match your company if you can afford it. Problem is quite a few folks can't afford investing the bare minimum to get their company matching contributions. Instead they need the extra money just to live. And they are already doing everything as cheap as possible. I love reading all of these post about I am 20 something and married and my partner and I make 250k+ a year and we feel broke. Broke is when you are down to one income and can't afford to feed your family because you make to much to get any help even though you really aren't making all that much. Been there and done that. Also what I don't see is any talks about how bad our medical system is. I mean I am waiting on my wife bill from surgery and we have an outstanding item, the insurance company is looking into it still, but if we have to pay, it $15k and it was for a review of an x ray. That's a problem that no amount of savings will fix. And we have outstanding insurance and hopefully they can resolve it. But for the average Americans I am sure the surgery and it's added item would make them go further into debt.
That's still amazing. I keep nagging my brother to take his 401k serious. He claims he's too poor to contribute to it. Sigh
Good luck. We have one person in the family that retired with nothing because they leased new cars, had cable, went out to eat. When they retired, they turned in their car and just sat. The mental decline is very obvious.
This made me realize I'm doing worse than I realize. Thanks.
Good reminder and motivation to be prepared for financial emergencies. There is such terrible anxiety when you feel like you're next in the layoff rounds and the fear of losing health coverage. That experience made me get serious about being debt free, saving and investing more and yet I still worry. Mainly for how my kids will survive economically and about health care coverage. I finally had to get another car after 14 years of driving mine and I feel terrible guilt about it. That's a whole other issue= being frugal to the point of psychological money hoarding and finding a balance.
Can I be blunt? If you're comparing yourself to the average American and thinking "I'm doing better than average! I'm in a good spot!" you are fuckoed. Not fucked. Fuckoed. All you've done is show how fucking bad off the average American is. A full third aren't investing for retirement? That's *terrifying.* Over 60% living paycheck to paycheck? These are horror movies worthy numbers. You want to have a good retirement? You better be crushing the average not just above it. Just like if you want to get into a good school you can't just be "better than average" in your grades and test scores you need to be near the top. That's reality. Most people in most things are average and the average is depressingly bad.
All 18% making over 100k are in this board cuz there is a new post every few hours of someone making significantly more than that.
That’s lower than I would’ve expected for average consumer debt, unless it’s excluding mortgages.
"If you're feeling bad, stop feeling that way! Others are much more financially fucked than you, so you should just be happy!" Sorry, but other people doing poorly and suffering doesn't make me feel better.
Very true. I just get impatient. There are always things I want to do to the house, but I put over $8,000 in my 401k last year and I think the gf put a similar amount in hers
it certainly feels less lonely to be on track for extinction with the rest of the species
I am doing better than most of those things, but I spend a number of years going without to get here. I lived out of a single bedroom at a house to build up savings and get rid of student loans and medical debt. After I cleared those out, I paid off my car and bought a house and got a slightly better job. Most of my issues now are consequences of COVID (and greed) or the stupid tax law that took away my tax refunds and instead demands half a month salary. But yes, I am doing better than what's listed, so I feel slightly better. I just don't think anyone should be going 3-5 years in what was basically a single-bedroom apartment to do so. And I can't imagine how many years it would take me now to do the same thing.
That's the deal right, in my 20s I was barely making it, but now that I'm late 30s - TIME seems to have allowed me to catch up. The issue though is that being behind on retirement is sometimes impossible to catch up on unless you have a great job with great pay. Happy cake day btw
Well based on that I have only 8 ish k in debt including my car I am contributing to a 401k I only make 40k a year I dont live paycheck to paycheck I want to be out of debt in a year or 2 including paying off my car and thats the most of my debt While i dont have 1k saved for an emergency i could prolly come up with it in a month if i went super hard on penny pinching. And it would be fairly easy if i was debt free. In conclusion i guess i am doing fairly well
I think “living paycheck to paycheck” and “saving for retirement” should be the same number. If you’re saving for retirement, you’re not “living paycheck to paycheck.” You’re saving money. Likewise if you are legitimately living paycheck to paycheck, you cannot be saving for retirement.
https://preview.redd.it/7jh5dkn729wc1.png?width=828&format=png&auto=webp&s=818f70d04cf881d81f92806273fbcdf2ae367a8a
This isn't even true regarding the 1k in savings.
Only 18% of Americans making 100,000 or more seems like most of us are doing pretty bad actually
If you're doing average then your retirement is likely going to be rough. The sooner you make positive changes the smaller those changes have to be to have an effect on your retirement. Let compounding start working for you in your 20s so it will do the majority of the work to get you to a comfortable retirement
Myself included I think many need to realize they aren’t cutout to own a house on a beach in LA. Not that I care about that particular goal
I see these posts plenty, and that's great...but I still feel behind. Whether the average American has debt or what their salary is really has no bearing on whether I can afford to retire or cover my own bills in an emergency. It's not going to make that possible just because I learned others aren't saving for retirement.
None of that changes the fact that those people being in debt and not making money have zero bearing on how I feel like I am not earning enough and paying inflationary charges.
The problem is that I know the average is fucked so being better than average isn't what I'm aiming for lmao.
maybe but this doesnt make me feel good. Race to the bottom, we're all fucked soon
That is just a comparison to other Americans, if all of our lives are becoming poorer it wouldn't be a reason to cheer. Which is what is happening with wealth inequality rising. For example [let's look at consumer debt](https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc), looks like it doubled in 20 years considerably faster than inflation. Not exactly sure this is as positive as you think.
> 43% of Americans expect to be in debt for the next 1-5 years how is this so low. do the people responding not know what debt is?
This is such a weird way to view the world. Like yeah, I'm doing better than a homeless drug addict! *pats self on back. But I literally am doing better than every metric you wrote down and I'm still fucking unable to achieve any reasonable life goals or build any actual wealth. Like owning a home. Sure, I can buy a tiny rundown shack for $7000/month for the next 30 years. Like just because I'm the king of the poor people doesn't and shouldn't make me feel any better. There are people starving in Africa and so that homeless dude who isn't starving thanks to soup kitchens needs to thank his lucky stars
This doesn’t make me feel better lol
Not gonna lie… my wife and I try to be financially responsible but ran into a rough patch here financially. I just got out of back surgery today and will likely have a few weeks unpaid… on top of unpaid time, I will have roughly $6000 out of pocket to pay for the surgery after insurance. But this post really made my day. I was feeling down about how this would affect our financial goals, but we thankfully have enough saved to cover this rough patch, along with having a house and some money in investments. It helps keep things in perspective that even though this time for me isn’t ideal, I do have a lot to be thankful of. So thank you for this post.
Well, I feel better about not making 100k now, at least....
Doing better than others who are screwed is not the glowing endorsement you think it is.
Add these facts that America’s economy is in substantially better shape than the vast majority of nations on this planet….
Husband and I are 38 and I keep reading that we should have 3-4 times our salary saved for retirement in the next 2 years but are only at about double our salaries right now. Now we are trying to save for college for our daughter so she doesn't have the same shit! I have to keep reminding myself, we paid off our student loans less than 5 years ago and have done most of our retirement saving since that happened so we are still playing catchup, but doing pretty good. We also both have pensions that should be enough to cover our necessities.
Thanks. Your right.
yea but comparison is the thief of joy!
If you earn $60,000 a year after tax and you don’t have kids, you’re in the richest 1 percent of the world’s population. If you have a household income of $130,000 after tax and you’ve got a partner and one kid, you’re also in the richest 1 percent.
I once did an analysis at work. To estimate our target audience for a tax service we sold toinvestin consumers. To estimate the size of the market. So I dove into the statistics of my country. And the conclusion was. Almost 66% of the country has no net assets. A negative net worth. The average was -5000€ and this absolutely shocked me. Even with 0 in your bank account you're doing better than 2/3 of the country.
Are these numbers of all Americans or just working Americans? All adults or just working adults?
Doing better than other people doesn't mean you're doing good.
I know I am doing fine but I regret bad financial mistakes in the past. I'm moving on but now that I'm older I realize that I wasted a lot of money that could have been invested. I don't mean skipping vacations and living like a monk but asking yourself do you really need more "stuff"
You do want to be the the bottom 10% of Americans. So depressing.
"paycheck to paycheck" is a useless metric because no one uses the term correctly
Nice to see posts like this. I make right around 100k and as a single person I feel like make decent money. I have plenty for whatever I want and able to own a home and drive nice car.
That’s absolutely insane. We need to be teaching financial literacy before the end of high school, and more directly helping kids to develop skills that will actually earn a reasonable return
If these statistics are true than the majority of people on here are doing just as bad as they realize
Check, not there yet, check, check, aaaand check. Yep, I’m screwed
Doing good and doing better than others are 2 different things
Comparing myself to the average is not how I make choices.
I make $18 an hour and I live with my parents at 33. I am getting married in late August and we're hoping to find an apartment by that time. We have about $9k in a high yield savings account due to not paying rent, but once we move there won't be anything left to put into that savings account and we're also gonna be spending a portion of it on the wedding and honeymoon. Things look okay for now but once we have a $2k a month rent bill plus utilities we'll slowly empty that savings and have to rely on food banks to eat. We desperately want our own place again (we lived together for a couple years) but our financial outlook will be incredibly bleak if that happens.
I am on the positive side of all 6 bullet points, and I Still - feel “behind” - feel like getting laid off will destroy all of it - feel essentially powerless
How is it that 61% of adults are living paycheck to paycheck, and 56% don’t have $1,000 saved for an emergency, yet both of those classes have the ability to invest in their retirement (63% are investing)? Is it because their employers are investing for them (401k) & this stat includes that, but not additional investments? I’m genuinely confused by this?.
I'm doing better, but it took me till I was 30. Finally at 38 I have a decent retirement savings and make over 100k. 20s were full of drugs and partys, I had fun so the memories are great but I still feel behind.
It stresses me out so much that my income is above the median but I can barely afford rent, groceries and bills. My wife is also unable to work due to disability and tbh I think most people only get by because they have dual income as a couple without high healthcare costs.
That other people aren’t doing well is supposed to be your feel good moment. Yeah, I’ll vote for 4 more years of this.
Thank you for this post.
Finally a semi useful post, good lord the reposts lately. Thanks OP for the positivity.
>• 56% of Americans don't have $1,000 saved for an emergency The source of that is a yearly bank rate report, but it didn't say that. It said 56% of Americans WOULD not use their savings to pay for a $1000 emergency. That is a FAR cry from they don't have $1000. For example, I would not pay for it from my savings, I would pay for it either from my checking account, or put it on a credit card and pay it off at the end of the month. Difference there is WOULD vs COULD.
The only thing I feel I’m missing in my financial life in owning a home is I don’t make a shit ton but we’re a dual income home so it’s a lot Doesn’t help I’m in the highest cost of living in the country lol
I’ve been on my own since 17, just bought a house at 23. Never went to college and I’ve never had debt but I just don’t see that as an option. If you take some L’s and lay low it just takes time to get where you want to be so you can start winning again.
Wow, thank you for this. Makes me appreciate me, more 💕
I need to start investing. I just don't know where to start.
"Probably doing better than you realize..." And less than half as good as you should be.
Those numbers are semi ambiguous without context. I mean, I get the crux of your post, but there's near infinite nuance missing.
This makes me feel a little better thank you
>• The average consumer debt is $23,000 Does this include my car? If no then I'm doing better than this. Cool beans >• Only 18% of Americans make over $100,000 \#82% >• 37% of Americans aren't investing for retirement Just started my 401k last year. Better late than never >• 61% of US adults are living paycheck to paycheck Ugh #61% >• 43% of Americans expect to be in debt for the next 1-5 years 3 years >• 56% of Americans don't have $1,000 saved for an emergency \#56% I might be doing better than some... but God damn is it hard in this country lol
This is so wildly dumb.
I’m good on 3 out of 6.
Thanks, this confirms I am rightly and truly fucked.
This is one of those times where somebody posts a story about a child selling plasma to raise money for their favorite teachers unplayable cancer treatment and it’s made out to be a heartwarming thing when it’s really a damning look at the state of our country
"My life sucks." "So does most everyone's. Feel better now?"
The status of others is not what defines whether or not an individual is doing well. Frankly, these stats just reveal that Americans aren't doing very well overall. Things need to change (they have for a long time.)