For 95% of my life I’ve been poor or just getting by. The last five years have been financially very good to me but it has come at the cost of $100k in student loans (I will literally die before they are paid off).
I despise articles/pundits/random buttholes who gasp aloud and clutch pearls at the thought many Americans don’t have $1,000 readily at hand and live paycheck to paycheck. This was my reality for decades and I have worked full-time, at pretty good jobs, since I was 18 AND I don’t have kids to support.
By being like my roomie Mona, or several of my classmates in grad school. They live on credit. Some day the credit will come due, but that’s, you know, some other day.
Jennshark, that it was your reality doesn’t make it good.
The recession hits, and spending is the be-all and end-all of the economy. Now the economy has recovered, and we haven’t saved enough. Go figure.
To answer the poll, yes, I could come up with $400 or $1000. Put it on the credit card if possible (and then pay off the balance) or give me a couple minutes to get to the ATM. To those who say they can’t save up $1000, I believe you, for various meanings of “can’t”.
True, but there can be really odd expenses like an engine exploding on a car that had been problem free and maintained.
I carried expensive vet insurance for years until the stuff they wouldn’t cover (certain cancers, aging dog issues) got ridiculous and it was better just to bank the money after two of my pups died of an uncovered cancer.
Sometimes, it’s the kids. Kids can cost money for all sorts of reasons.
Other times - it’s a matter of more lifestyle than salary. Me, I’ve always tried to live within my means, and if that means giving something up so the bills can get paid so be it - that’s why I haven’t flown an airplane for over a decade now. I certainly want to, but I can’t afford it. When I was under/unemployed I gave up buying new clothes (except when socks or underwear wore out), alcohol, vegetables other than what came out of my garden… At one point the truck sat in the driveway for three months until we could get the money to fix it. Sure, it sucked, but we survived without debt.
Meanwhile, I saw people crash and burn because they couldn’t cut back on luxuries.
Sometimes, when you have a job interruption or a large medical bill it can really screw you up. Suddenly, you’re scrambling to pay the mortgage (and it’s much harder to lower a mortgage payment than to, say, move from an expensive rental to a cheaper one) or other essentials, or that credit card debt that a year ago you could have paid off in a month or two will now take you two years because either your income dropped or you have to pay the hospitals/doctors/etc. So you have someone with a decent income who suddenly is struggling.
Actually, my disabled spouse could usually earn significantly more than minimum wage - when he could get a job (yes, discrimination really exists! It really is harder to get a job when you have a limp or other disability. Hubby eventually started his own business, but that can also lead to problems and debt.)
That aside - when I was “between” jobs I took on quite a few minimum wage temp gigs just to bring a little money in. So yes, for awhile I was that “wretched”. I didn’t stay at that point, but for a couple years during the Great Recession yes, it was that bad. But thanks for implying that people who are willing to take on shitty, minimum wage jobs while working towards something better are mentally deficient, or that disabled folks should be settling for the minimum.
People are habituated to the circumstances.
I make 200% of the poverty income these days, which means I’m no longer officially “working poor” but it’s still about half the median US income so I’m not sure I’d be described as “middle class” by most people. Yes, I can cover $1,000 without borrowing. I could, for an extremely dire emergency, cover more than that.
I also realize that I am very much the exception these days.
Not to speak for Nava, but my guess is she was responding to the connotation (intended or not) in your post that because you’re happy/turned out ok, you think that people who think it’s problematic that many Americans live paycheck to paycheck are pearl-clutchers and butt-holes.
But I have one son in grad school and another who just got laid off. I don’t think either of them could scrape up the cash right now to pay for a new car battery, much less $1,000.
No shit. Also, working full time at “pretty good jobs” with no kids and you’re living paycheck to paycheck/you can’t pay off $100k in your lifetime? Either we have very different definitions of a “good job” or something else is going on.
I remember realizing I could ratchet down one type of concern for my adult kids, when I had this kind of discussion w/ my mid-20s son and he said, "Hell, I’ve got $500 in cash squirreled away in different books and stuff, just incase he needs it.
Not judging any single person’s situation, but I believe a substantial majority of folk could be in such a position - IF they thought that was desirable - or worth foregoing/delaying immediate desires to attain. Just about every aspect of one’s lifestyle reflects a choice. The choice to live where housing is cheap, but transportation is expensive. The choice to amass debt to obtain education. The choice to own a TV, with cable. Owning pets. Having children.
In response to the OP, we try to keep $20k in our “emergency” account. When we spend out of it, we intentionally save and forego discretionary spending until it is back to $20k. Which is where we’ll be this afternoon, after we write a $10k check for the new roof…
The articles I’ve seen about this aren’t blaming those who don’t have $1,000, they blame the society where stagnant salaries and crap jobs without benefits cause this problem. Though I don’t watch Fox News, which probably does blame the poor and struggling.
Statistics like this are a good wake up call to anyone who thinks the problem in America is that the rich pay too much in taxes.
I wouldn’t have the slightest problem with writing a check for $400 or $1000 now, or getting cash from one of several credit cards that currently have a zero balance outstanding, but there have been several times in my life when none of that was possible, so I can sympathize.
Not everyone’s career is a gradual, upward slope from youth to senescence, accumulating capital at a steady and increasing rate. Some careers are feast & famine from choice or chance. I remember being on food stamps once, and not being able to pay a penny of rent for 3 months. Only a sympathetic landlord kept me from being on the street. A year later, after paying all back rent, I bought a house with 20% down and paid the rest within 2 years.
A 17 percentage point overlap doesn’t seem that out of line with a lot of surveys I’ve seen with multiple choices (e.g., not OK, REALLY not OK, comfortable). I looked over the link, including the survey questions, and found no definition of those terms. So someone who’s living paycheck-to-paycheck, especially those who couldn’t manage that in 2013 (the last time the survey was taken), would be quite likely to say they’re merely OK. The working poor are quite aware of those less fortunate.
I guess it is all a matter of perspective. If I was down to my last few hundred dollars, there would be DEFCON 1 panic and not a single cent would leave the premises without being scrutinized and determined to being life-threatening necessary.
I meant that some Americans born into relative privilege truly don’t understand how difficult life is for many people and have not experienced real financial struggle; there’s a total lack of understanding that many people don’t have a financial safety net even though they work hard and have tried to do things “right.” In 1984 my mom lost our house following a divorce she got screwed in. She was alone with six kids (I was 15) and worked three jobs; the bank would have taken $1200 to stave off foreclosure, but we had nothing and no one to borrow from. And that’s how we lost our childhood home that was just a few years from being paid off.
I was aiming to convey that I lived poor or very frugally for decades and I get angry when people who’ve never had real money worries are aghast at how close to the edge many Americans live. It feels like willful ignorance. My brothers work as welders, steelworkers, and truck drivers. They struggle to make ends meet and I’m saddened by the real possibility that their kids – also hard-working skilled tradesmen – are going to have it even worse. Hell, a couple I’m close with are a university professor and New York Times editor and they struggled to put their kids through a state college. And their kids, 23 and 26, are working multiple jobs just to stay afloat. These are careful, thoughtful, educated, and thrifty people who recently had to take out a bank loan for $8,000 to fix a ruptured waterline under their house.
I haven’t lived paycheck to paycheck for five or so years. I lived poor for decades, always worked at least two jobs, started college when I was 30, and clawed my way through grad school. I’m now financially comfortable in my 50s. Rather than pay my student loans off I make the minimum payment and have a substantial amount in cash and investments put aside for my nieces and nephews to inherit.
Yup, I’ve worked my ass off to get to where I am, but I’ve also had some absolutely extraordinary luck along the way that got me here. Lots of folks I know who are smarter, more talented, and more ambitious than I am have been screwed by the myth of the American meritocracy.