No, they aren’t stupid. They’re humans doing what we need to fucking survive. Examine our health system, constant advertising, corporate rape of our tax coffers, and a minimum wage which is nowhere CLOSE to a living wage. Then come back and say 64% of Americans are retards.
Why pay to borrow money you already have?
ETA: To answer the OP, yes, and many multiples of it.
I don’t think blaming advertising for why you are broke is very fair. And minimum wage isn’t really meant to be a living wage. It’s called “minimum” for a reason.
You don’t need to pay to borrow if you just pay off the credit card at the end of the billing period. And then you earn a thousand frequent flyer miles.
This attitude really puzzles me. We’re a “pay cash for a used car and drive it into the ground kinda family”. I rarely see beaters on the road anymore, so I guess you’re right. I think it’s nuts.
And, yes, we could come up with the money.
I specifically excluded those with extenuating circumstances such as unemployment.
There are always people that are struggling, that I understand. My question was whether or not 64% seemed reasonable.
I was a bit naughty in voting because it would be whatever the equivalent of $1000 is in GBP, which I don’t know, but I do know I have £10 in my savings account.
Because:
I spend everything I earn to maintain my obligations
The obligations are mostly my mortgage and repaying credit cards
There is no point saving money which earns next to nothing while having credit cards which charge interest
On the plus side:
My mortgage allows me to live on my own in a nice apartment
The credit card debt was racked up while I did a postgrad course
So I have a comfortable home and a qualification which will one day lead to earning more money
I also have a payment plan to pay off the cards (not officially with the bank or anything, I did it myself in Excel 
). But in the truest sense of the phrase, I do live paycheck to paycheck. There’s nothing left at the end of the month once the mortgage, cards, food, travel, bills et al come out - though I do budget for a few treats now and then 
I couldn’t right now. Before this recession I always kept five grand in the bank, by being very frugal. Costs have gone up where I live, my medical insurance has gone up a ton, and my health benefits have gone down. My employer had to pass on some of the health plan cost to me, giving me an effective pay cut. I continued to be able to pay my monthly bills, but I could no longer budget for things that “came up” like tire replacement, auto repair, vet bills, etc. Slowly the 5k dwindled until there was none, even after tightening my belt as much as I could without giving up things like having a car.
When my savings hit zero I freaked out. My anxiety levels went through the roof, causing me to have to seek care and medication for anxiety. Ironically, the meds are pretty expensive, further straining my finances. I’ve been living for a couple years now with nothing in savings. I deal with it by doing without whatever I can’t afford and making “trades” in my finances. For example, if I need to spend a hundred dollars on something, I pull that from things budgeted for food or gas, and eat very cheaply and don’t travel anywhere far until I get paid again. If I can’t afford something, I just have to do without. If there were a life or death emergency I’d have to sell my car, I could probably get 3k for it in a day or so.
Sure, but at the same time, it does seem rather perplexing to some of us to hear tales of constant poverty from people who really ought to be better off.
If you’re dumb enough to be that easily swayed by constant advertising that it actually affects your financial well being, you could probably be legitimately called a retard.
And… I’d like to see some proof that all that many people actually make minimum wage. Most anyone worth a shit will be making well more than that, even if they started out there. Hell, I always made more than minimum, even at crap summer jobs. It’s hard to believe that there are grown people out there who are so wretched that all they can do is work for minimum wage, without being illegal immigrants, seriously mentally deficient or otherwise handicapped in some way.
Bump, there’s a spectrum…sure there are wasteful people that ‘oughta be better off’, but I think a LOT of people are like Kalypso
I know my Gross family income has dropped by 30%, but I ALSO know my expenses have shot through the roof. I haven’t been receiving cost of living increases (2 in 10 years), my healthcare costs have gone up while the stuff they cover has decreased, the state contribution to my retirement has been cut - a net 2.5% loss in salary, That box of Mac N Cheeze you used to by for $1 that had 12 oz of food in it? It’s got 7.5 oz, now.
Since the value of money historically declines over time, it’d be fairly easy to see that, for my family, we’re making 50% of the earning potential we made 8 years ago.
A person can be COMPLETELY IMMUNE TO ADVERTISING, not spend a DIME on frivolous crap, and STILL be scraping along because the death of a thousand cuts is continuing.
If you’d asked the question a year ago, the answer would have been no. But I recently came into a modest inheritance which allowed us to pay off the credit cards, make some home improvements, and create a nice ‘emergency fund’.
Thank you mom and dad for being smart with your money. It took me a while longer to learn the lesson, but I’m finally following in your footsteps now.
Easily. Anything more than $10k would be a stretch, however.
Yes. I have 6 months of expenses (with no lifestyle change) in savings; 8+ months if I made a few changes (cut off the internet and cable, got a different cell phone, pulled my daughter out of preschool). I was a marriage where I had absolutely zero financial stablility. He did not/would not work and yet spent money faster than I could make it. Now that I am out of that marriage, I am debt free and have savings to fall back on, which is a fantastic feeling.
I don’t make a lot of money, but I don’t spend what I don’t have either.
Yes, easily. It would not have been easy three months ago; I could have come up with the cash but I’d probably wind up borrowing from my parents to have enough gas to drive to work. Right now, I have a little over two grand in the bank, and that’s on a $12 an hour, less than 40 hour a week job. It helps that my expenses are super-low since I got a great deal on rent and have two housemates, and I have no car, college, or credit card debt, but I’ve always been more an ant than a grasshopper. I’m looking at my job ending on or around Nov. 6 until February at the earliest, so I’m definitely saving with a passion so that I can not be broke-ass poor in the interim. I had hoped to travel during that period, rather than simply be around town trying to pick up work, but I don’t know how realistic that is now.
But that’s what I’m talking about- you’ve got 2 raises in 10 years, and your health care has gone south, and your employer is jerking you around on your retirement.
This death of a thousand cuts sounds like one you’re allowing to happen by staying in the same job.
Unless you’re in some field where your current employer is literally the only game in town, you ought to get a different job; if you’ve been somewhere 10 years, you probably have enough experience to be valuable to someone else in the same industry, or depending on the job, in another industry.
I could… I got completely out of debt a couple of years ago through frugality; I was in a relationship at the time that seemed headed for marriage, and I wanted to be debt-free for that. We did get engaged, but things went south soon after. No relationship meant no going out/presents/etc., so I had a growing surplus in my bank account. Then, I got a hefty tax return, got more in scholarships than my tuition cost, and suddenly I had that magical six-month’s-salary cushion. With more time, I could liquidate my retirement fund and 401k and get a lot more. (Hell, if I was desperate, just my open lines of credit would be enough to give me to immediately cover an emergency that would cost a year’s salary. And I have a standing offer from my ex-fiancee’s rather well-off family to come to them for money with no strings attached.)
I was quite happy to have that cushion this year, too; had a weird eye problem set in over the holiday season that led to temporary blindness and needed immediate treatment to avoid damage to the optic nerves. My doctors were afraid to talk about the cost of treatments (especially the more expensive voluntary stuff that would be faster and more effective), and were relieved when I told them that with my insurance and savings, I was willing to spend anything necessary to save my eyes. Total cost of treatment was around $10,000, and I was prepared to pay in cash for the whole thing. It was a relief to know that I could afford the emergency, and that I would still not be in debt once it was over.
Of course, my costs turned out to be far lower; insurance covered about 80%, so I budgeted the $2000 into my expenses and waited for the hospital bills. After a few months, it arrived, and nearly $1800 had been inexplicably written off. I spent less to save my vision than I did on getting a couple of new tires for my car. Since I had already budgeted the $2000 into my expenses, I donated the excess to the medical group’s charitable fund.
Something about the way my cheep ass parents raised me I guess, I fine a general sense of shittness constantly if I don’t have at least 3000 in the bank.
If something happens and I have to withdraw that money for the mentioned emergency. I drop my lifestyle to exact subsistence levels,Rent, Gas to get to work, rice’n’beans( except for internet :)) until I have my 3k security blanket again.
But you said people who are employed now ought to be OK, while in fact many people who are employed at this moment can still be trying to recover from unemployment a little while ago.
Due to a start-up business going under, my funds are much lower than I am normally comfortable with.
But I could do 1K.
I avoid advertising and make twice minimum wage in my area (which has a higher COL than average, and a correspondingly higher minimum wage).
A living family wage in the 40s and 50s was a man bringing in enough to support the entire family. Yes it was more than minimum, but it supported way more people. Back then minimum wage would be enough for a single person to live on with roommates. These days, it barely covers gas to and from work.