75 Percent Of Americans Don't Have Enough Savings To Cover Their Bills For Six Months: SurveyFor 47-year-old mom Kim Norton, it’s a “constant battle” to find enough money to even pay her bills, let alone save up.
“I rob Peter to pay Paul; I don’t spend my money frivolously on crap; I just make sure my kids have what they need,” Norton, who works part time as a research coordinator through a temp agency, told The Huffington Post. “I get really wound up thinking about how you just can’t get ahead.”
A single mother of four living in Bangalore, Maine, Norton says she often writes checks for bills without enough money in her bank account to pay them, hoping the check won't clear until her next paycheck arrives. Between rent, child care and other necessities, Norton says her expenses cost more than she earns, leaving her without a cushion to fall back on in case of emergencies.
More than three-fourths of Americans don’t have enough money saved to pay their bills for six months, according to survey results released Monday by Bankrate. Half of the survey respondents said they had less than three months’ worth of expenses saved up, and more than one-quarter -- like Norton -- have no reserves to draw on in case of emergency.
Sounds like a rich country but most live from paycheque to paycheque. So whom do you blame. 75 Percent Of Americans Don't Have Enough Savings To Cover Their Bills For Six Months: Survey
I've been thinking this myself. It looks like the best (only) way to accumulate capital is to simply be homeless.They're all lazy entitled freeloaders who take their paycheck for granted and waste money on luxuries like refrigeration, indoor plumbing and microwaves. The country and the economy would undoubtedly be much better off if they stopped spending money and learned to live like 3rd world peasants.
I've been thinking this myself. It looks like the best (only) way to accumulate capital is to simply be homeless.
Oh yeah, I guess so. We should start taxing them.You do have about 600,000 homeless people there. So I guess they are all budding millionaires.
She lives in "Bangalore," Maine?Sounds like a rich country but most live from paycheque to paycheque. So whom do you blame. 75 Percent Of Americans Don't Have Enough Savings To Cover Their Bills For Six Months: Survey
You do have about 600,000 homeless people there. So I guess they are all budding millionaires.
About 6 years ago I was saving 17% of my gross and had about 5k on hand all the time, we make great money and had insurance. then my wife had a major medical event that went over 1 million. We are just about caught up. Nobody can save enough for medical problems.
2) The idea that lack of birth control somehow stops people from having sex (covering the "Kim Nortons" of the world, that had kids a little earlier she expected to)The annual wages of the bottom 90 percent of workers declined between 2009 and 2011, according to a January analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The wages of the top one percent rose 8.2 percent during the same period.
We have over 300 million people, so 600,000 homeless is is like two tenths of one percent. most of them are homeless because they chose to be, or because of metal illness of some sort. Many of those homeless people stay in government or private shelters, so they probably even shouldn't be called homeless.
There are several reasons that our savings rate is so low. First is that we have become accustomed to the expectation that every generation should have a higher standard of living that the previous generation. Yet the real median income stopped increasing in the late 1970's, thus for my generation to have a better standard of living than our parents, that means less savings and more debt.
The second reason is related to the first. We have growing income disparity in the US. The mean average income has increased quite a bit since the late '70's, but it's all gone to the top few percent. These leaves the top few percent with more money than they have a need for, and the median income earner with the inability to have the same real income as our parents did. Those with excess wealth seek to obtain a rent on their wealth by renting it out (loaning), and those who don't have the wealth that we would have expected seek to obtain wealth, so we borrow from the rich. Our high level of personal debt is probably the best measure of income disparity.
The third reason is that many of us are tending to wait longer in life before we start saving. We spend our money, and more, on providing a nice childhood to our children (because just as we expected to live a better standard of living, we expect our children to have a better standard of living).
Another reason is that we have saftey nets. We have unemployment compensation, welfare, foodstamps, SCHIP, the emergency room can't turn us down for care, and we also have medicade, medicare, and social security. I suspect that if we did away with our safety net system, we would tend to save more.
Is there a Bangalore in Maine? As far as I know Bangalore is the capital city of the Indian state of Karnataka.
I suspect that if we did away with our safety net system, we would tend to save more.
Sounds like a rich country but most live from paycheque to paycheque. So whom do you blame.
:shrug: when we were a young family making the kind of income that rated us foodstamps, we always had an emergency fund. If I lost my job tomorrow I could live - barring anything catastrophic - for almost a year off of our savings.
Sounds like a rich country but most live from paycheque to paycheque. So whom do you blame. 75 Percent Of Americans Don't Have Enough Savings To Cover Their Bills For Six Months: Survey
I will be worried with just one year. Right now I have 10 years.
well, the rest of my savings I'm dumping into longer term things - IRA's, ESA's, etc. Plus, we're still pretty young, I have several decades of work in me left.
This is my single greatest fear in retirement...I tell people all that time that you're only one heart attack, stroke, or cancer diagnosis from hundreds of thousands in debt, even if insurance pays 80%...what's 20% of one million? That's what you're on the hook for to the hospital.About 6 years ago I was saving 17% of my gross and had about 5k on hand all the time, we make great money and had insurance. then my wife had a major medical event that went over 1 million. We are just about caught up. Nobody can save enough for medical problems.
Living with parents or renting, living with roomates, all good choices for someone who wants to live below their means and save. If you mean living entirely on the street, that's not advisable because the risks likely would cost you more for a variety of reasons (health, security, reputation). There was that middle class lady in the news who left her family to live homeless for a while, she chose it over all those nice amenities and middle class lifestyle, don't act as though you're being serious.I've been thinking this myself. It looks like the best (only) way to accumulate capital is to simply be homeless.
This is my single greatest fear in retirement...I tell people all that time that you're only one heart attack, stroke, or cancer diagnosis from hundreds of thousands in debt, even if insurance pays 80%...what's 20% of one million? That's what you're on the hook for to the hospital.
Usually 20% of $1M, if $1M doesn't exceed your plan, is about $10,000. There is a max out of pocket on most plans and it caps it.
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