What the fuck is this? “How employers might help change that” Answer: they wont, they just might be forced to let employees give themselves a fee-free loan from their own retirement account, oh and here’s a slightly different new emergency savings account. It’s still all just your money…What the actual fuck?
What about the half of US workers that don’t have a retirement account? I guess fuck them?
Isn’t the answer simple? HIGHER WAGES.
Man, this made me incredibly angry.
Paying higher wages doesn’t get people to start bank accounts, much less retirement accounts.
Many people on the poorer end of the spectrum literally hide money in their walls/mattresses rather than get bank accounts - I know many of these people firsthand.
A bank account isn’t going to magically make you richer.
Not having one does make you poorer, but this is neither here nor there.
My point is, someone hiding money in their mattress isn’t going to put much value in 401(k)s and likely does not have one.
I just want to know what type of emergency only costs $500 anymore?
Uber to the hospital.
Emergency pizza and ice cream?
A simple blown tire that renders you only reliable way to work that doesn’t pay enough to cover your basic living expenses is a catastrophic emergency that could cost around 500 bucks.
A part of a tree falling on your windshield.
Seriously, that’s what it ended up costing me, and I did part of the body work needed to be able to fit a new windshield in right. If I hadn’t kept the tools around, that would have been another 500.
Mind you, the 500 I did pay out included some other body work I just couldn’t physically do. The glass and installation of the glass was “only” 150 ish (can’t remember what the tax was).
The one before that, that was barely under 500 was the AC unit for the house freezing up and fucking the compressor.
And 500 is a single emergency. You get hit by multiple, and you’re fucked .
Had a tree limb fall during a storm and crush my wife’s car roof. That was an f.u. moment.
Exactly. A cheap car repair is that with labor. Add kore than one thing in a few months and most people start to really bleed.
For people who don’t have any savings, things you may call an inconvenience, or don’t even think about, could be considered emergencies.
Pretty much everyone needs a cell phone these days. Maybe the person drivers for DoorDash, so they use their phone for work. The phone gets dropped and breaks. They need it fixed or replaced. For people with money, this is a little annoying, they need to go to the store and take care of it when they had other plans. For someone without any savings, this is now an emergency they can’t pay for, and if they don’t take care of it they can’t work. It gets put on a credit card and now they’re paying 20% interest on their phone until they can deliver enough meals to pay it off, on top of all their normal expenses.
And somehow these CEOs are still talking about pandemic money 3 years later.
They are. And it would be funny if it weren’t such utter bullshit. As if the sizeable chunk of the population that lives paycheck to paycheck could actually afford to hold on to a couple thousand dollars in stimulus funds. When shit is waaayyyy more expensive than it was 3 years ago and wages haven’t really climbed that much.
My employer got $600,000 in ERC. Meanwhile, I haven’t had a pay increase in over 2 years. Been with the company for over 10 years.
My company was really arrogant and gave all the employees a one time bonus, basically our own little stimulus, thinking the pandemic wouldn’t impact us. Fast forward a year and they laid a bunch of people off to save money. I would have much rather them kept the money and not laid those people off.
The $800 stimi will never be forgotten.
Nobody has any fucking money. You can’t afford medical, you can’t afford a house, you can barely afford a car. You can barely afford rent. Everything is more expensive. Food, gas, everything. Wages can’t keep up with inflation and employers could give a shit.
And yet nothing is being set on fire.
Time for a good old fashioned French revolution.
That worked out so well…
How employers may help change that? PAY YOUR FUCKING PEOPLE MORE MONEY.
As a non American can I ask about your monthly budget? I’m really curious as to what’s really going on and how much it’s costing because everyone from different states are talking differently.
to an extent, it really does differ by state. however, housing costs went up significantly for both buying a house or renting in the last 2 years.
I live in the greater Seattle area, but not in Seattle, which is fairly expensive. I make about $50k per year, which is about $3400/ month take home after taxes and paying for health insurance. $1550 of that goes to rent. internet costs me $60/ month; I could get cheaper, crappier internet, but this way I also get to work from home a few days a week and enjoy online video games. power varies, depending on if I need to run the heat. for the summer, it’s about $60/month, in the winter it might go up to $200/month. I don’t do well in the cold, I could save money but sleep poorly and risk getting sick by not warming up so much. my brother has a deal for phone service, so we share a family plan where my share is $30/ month. I don’t have a car now, I ride the bus generally. that’s about $50/ month, but varies if I need to be in the office more or go more places than my usual sedentary habits.
if you’re keeping track, that’s about $1600/ month left after allocated expenses. I haven’t talked about food or other household necessities, or any fun leisure stuff. you’ll also notice I don’t have any student loans or medical debt or a car loan. I did spend a full year unemployed during covid, and ran up my credit card staying afloat. so I’ve got about $20k debt that I put at least $500/ month toward.
getting a car would be prohibitively expensive here - in addition to the cost of the car, I’d also be paying $100/ month to park it, +gas, +insurance. I’ve lived in other states where not having a vehicle meant you couldn’t work, because there was no effective public transit. usually those places didn’t have the parking expense, but gas and insurance alone are more expensive than my transit costs here usually are.
I’m pretty ok for this area. my rent is pretty cheap for a studio apartment (no bedroom, just living area, private kitchen, private bathroom). my debt is fairly low, and my credit remains pretty good, so if I need a loan it’s an option.
Thanks for the detailed information.
The US is massive and each state and city can have wildly varying costs of living and pay.
So it’s a bit hard to compare someone from NYC to someone who lives in Austin Texas.
Generally on the north east coast the cost of living is high due to density and so wages/salaries tend to be higher than somewhere with a lower cost of living. As you move into the mid west and central US things tend to come back down before going up again on the west coast.
Check out Caleb Hammer on YouTube, he goes over people’s finances who aren’t doing well financially. Digs into their spending and stuff and generally rips them a new one. People don’t know who to budget and they love debt.
Thank you I’ll check.
This is why predatory payday loan companies still exist.
I work full time for CVS and I have 26 cents in my bank account, nevermind 500. I literally cannot save, every cent is expenses. When an emergency happens I am straight up fucked every time.
An emergency happened for me in june and I was homeless by July, working fucking full time. Thank fuck I have a family I can stay with.I fucking hate this country. Literally standing in line to donate plasma for gas money. Christ.
I’m tired, boss.
The land of the fee.
America is kinda fucked up. Seeing it from the outside, nothing is surprising, the solutions are fairly obvious. If nothing else, the direction in which to go. Yet, it’s just dumb and dumber.
You had a real shot at change with Bernie Sanders. At least one of the three pieces. At this point, you’ll have a revolution within the next 5-10 years that changes the two party system, or it’s lights out.
Neither of these options is going to happen. The country will not fail, and there will be no revolution.
Whatever happened to Andrew Yang? Been praying for my universal income
Yanggang is still around, but it’s not looking likely we’re getting any kind of party nomination. I think it’s microwaved Bidem for dinner this round.
He has aligned himself with the Freedom Party. They are starting out by looking to get some traction in more local elections and their first primary goal is to push for ranked choice voting, which they think will help move beyond the 2 party system, as the winner take all idea goes away. It also should, in theory, stop candidates from playing to the extremes and force them to come together, as if you aren’t someone’s number 1 choice, you’d rather be number 2 than down at the bottom.
They aren’t looking to run anyone for president in 2024, but we’ll see what happens after that.
How much has the price of milk gone up in the last 4 years?
I still see LOTS of people with massive trucks, muscle cars and SUVs though.
Next time you see one of the fancy lifted “brodozer” trucks, pay attention to the tires. Often times they’re in bad shape, nearly worn out.
That’s because they bought this thing for $700 per month and never took into account that the fancy tires are $300+ each.
I’m curious how much of this is a budgeting, debt dependence, and responsibility problem, more than anything else. I had $500 saved up in high school when I was making $5.15/hr. At one point in college I ended up down at $300 and my bank charged me for not having enough money, I freaked out, started working more, didn’t buy shit for a while, and that never happened again.
These days I see a lot of people who make less than me (but still do well enough) in way nicer cars and way bigger/nicer homes. They can spend their money how they want, but if they end up in this stat it’s a them problem, not a system problem.
True, financial literacy is pretty lacking, but that’s more of an education issue than “their fault”
Most dealerships and banks will happily approve a loan that’s too high to be realistic. It’s predatory, I make $20/hr and got approved for up to $300k for a mortgage. I bought a house worth half that and it’s still a lot. Just feel like banks really shouldn’t let people sign loans worth 80% of their monthly income
I agree with that. The bank told me what kind of mortgage they’d approve me for and I responded, “that sounds really irresponsible.” It seemed like something they should hear, lol. I think the loan I ended up with with was 20% of the big number he threw out. I wasn’t interested in becoming house poor.
You mentioned 80% of their monthly income, that’s generally gross as well. They always ask for gross and then pretend taxes and other stuff don’t come out of the check before someone gets it. It seems like they should be asking what someone’s net pay is. To make the payment on a house they were talking about I’d be stopping my 401k, cancelling my health insurance, and would still be having trouble putting food on the table… and I’d be doing that for 30 years, praying I never lost my job or had to take a pay cut. I think their view is people are going to pay their mortgage before any other bill they have, so they can eat it all up and people can just deal with it. I thought after 2008 they wouldn’t be like that anymore, but they are.
I’ve always been a saver and naturally wanted a bit of a financial buffer. I guess I assume everyone has that or should have it, but that’s probably a bad assumption on my part. I remember even when my parents gave me a little allowance growing up (it wasn’t a lot, we got our age per month from probably age 10 until around 16 when we could work), I never remember running out and spending it, I saved. My sister, who grew up in the same house with the same parents spent everything she got. I can only assume we got very similar financial education and modeling up until that point in life. I remember when she was 17 or 18, she got an $80 ticket for running a red light and borrowed money from me, her little brother, to pay for it so she didn’t have to tell the parents about it.
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Financially illiteracy is a point; but it’s not a point for 50+% of the US. Median wage is $50k/year, which is far too low to ever purchase a home, so they’re affected by the median rent being $1,383. which is half their net income.
$500 is savings is a much lower bar than buying a home.
Yeah 63% seems way too high. The median wage in the US is like $50k. That’s not a ton of money, but half the population should definitely be able to find $500 in an emergency.
Same article from decades ago. This is nothing new, it’s not gotten better, it won’t get better anytime soon.
Employers could pay their employees’ student loans, stop forcing them to commute, and pay them well
First it was 40%, now it’s 63%
