When faced with an unexpected $1,000 expense, more than one-third of Americans would borrow the money, according to a new Bankrate survey. That may include tapping their credit cards, seeking money from friends or family or taking out a personal loan.
Most would not turn to cash savings because they don’t have it, the personal finance website found.
Fewer than half of Americans, 44%, say they can afford to pay a $1,000 emergency expense from their savings, according to Bankrate’s survey of more than 1,000 respondents conducted in December.
That is up from 43% in 2023, yet level when compared to 2022.
“We’re just not wired to save,” said Brad Klontz, a certified financial planner and expert in financial psychology and behavioral finance. Our brains are instead programmed to focus on our immediate needs.
It is a spending problem. I know people who make $500k/year who live paycheck to paycheck. I know other people who make $35k/year who have money left at the end of the month (not $1000).
Now i will grant it is a lot easier to live on 500k than 35k, and a lot easier to save. However living paycheck to paycheck doesn’t tell us anything.
“live paycheck to paycheck.”
That may be generally true, but they likely have a bunch of equity in their homes, and I’ll bet their retirement accounts are generous. Sure, there are some who just spend everything, but most people at that level are already “hiding” as much money as they can from taxes.
How many people actually own homes?
What do you mean by own? Own as in 100% paid for - not too many. Own as in their name is on the deed, but most of the value belongs to the bank - more than half of the US.
Lots of people don’t own their homes in any sense it’s my point. They rent.
Their names are on the titles, they own the homes. Their banks - the mortgage lenders - hold a rights to a lien placed on the property, but they have no title to the property unless they enforce the terms of their lending contract in the event of default.
The owners making 500k may very well be just a few months from foreclosure if they lose their job, but they likely have at least 20% (likely much more unless they bought at a premium two years ago) equity and can probably salvage at least half - even after fees - if they were to become “destitute” and undertook a regular sale of the property. 10% of a million dollars (or more), for most of the country, is still a healthy sum of money.
But they own portions of it. It isn’t like it’s 100% the bank’s house until the last payment is made. You build equity that is in fact yours. And in the last decade you could have made a killing if you’d bought a house at the right time. We sold a house last year for almost twice what we paid for it 7 years before. The bank doesn’t get any of that extra money.
The ones making $500k a year own multiples.
You’re fucking saying this nonsense on an article about how 44% of the country can’t come up with $1000 in an emergency.
By definition, if the people making $500k/year have been saving, that means they have money to pay off that emergency, even if comes from a fund they didn’t intend it to.
So nearly half the country isn’t in that bag. Can we stop with this “pAyChEcK tO pAyChEcK tElLs uS nOtHiNg” bullshit. There’s plenty of other data to show that more than half the country is fucking hurting. US average salary is right around $60k. That’s because there’s a shitload of people making $30k and a small sliver of people making $900k.
For example, to get an average of roughly $60k between a group of people making $30k and people making $900k, you need thirty people making $30k to one person making $900k. That’s our fucking economy, dude.
44%. That is far too many to be believable or explainable as a poverty problem. Well before you that many people there are plenty of people who on a similar income can find $1000. Getting a credit card with more than $1000 limit is easy if you have income - unless you already have so many maxed out, or otherwise have not made payments. Maybe not for everyone, but they are claiming > 40% of Americans here which means many of them have a good enough jobs and means to pay off a $1000 loan - so if they can’t get that it means they are way over extended.
The people I know making $500k/year have debt payments so high they can’t come up with $1000, and if they could get more debt they would have done so already.
The only thing I’m taking from this is that your friends (and by extension, rich people in general) are bad at managing their money, and they project that on to the poor.
The important point here is you cannot project this statistic on the poor! Maybe poor have problems, but there is no way 40% of the US is that poor. The majority of that 44% has a spending problem. If you want to make a statement about the poor you need to study the poor and that means you won’t study everyone and talk about 40+%.
Dude go jump in a wood chipper, please.
I’m poor and I have cancer meds that cost $16k a month. You literally don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I can’t spend money on anything extra if I fucking wanted to.
So you’re better off being used as kindling. Because you’ve got no evidence your position is true other than your feelings.
Man, fuck your feelings, put them in a wood chipper, too. Come with some data or fuck off into a wood chipper.
My guy, you can’t just dismiss the stat because it’s so high. The fact that it’s so high shouldn’t trigger skepticism, it should trigger alarm.
I’m not dismissing it. However I am dismissing the idea that this has anything to do with poverty. That later is what most people commenting seem to be assuming and that is not supported by the data we have.
Why would you think any of the data either side has is valid post-covid?
Nobody here gives a fuck about the people you know.
You’re right, it is unbelievable. Unbelievable that the wealthiest nation in the world, which built that wealth off the backs of those people (ignoring for the moment the colonialism, slavery, and other forms of economic abuse over its brief 250 years of existence), allows them to exist on the fringes of society where a $1000 emergency can be life or death. Unbelievable that there are tools like yourself who still insist this is an individual problem rather than a societal one. Unbelievable that we continue to do nothing about it but turn a blind eye and vilify them as they sink further and further into instability and poverty, and then turn around and wonder why half of society has given up on the very idea of society. And unbelievable that you can say the shit you say with a straight face without someone smacking the taste out of your mouth.
*chefs kiss
God Damn! 👏👏👏
c/murderedbywords
If you make 500k and live “paycheck to paycheck”, you have a BIG spending problem or massive debt. When people with low income live paycheck to paycheck, it isn’t because they are spending too much, it’s because they get paid peanuts and necessities are too expensive for that.
Almost all people who live paycheck to paycheck aren’t doing so because they are spending too much, they are doing so because their income and necessary living expenses are too close and they have no disposable income.
Blaming people who struggle when most of them are already frugal out of necessity is the sort of thing billionaires wants you to believe so you’ll not look at the actual problem.