62% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck, making it ‘the main financial lifestyle,’ report finds
cnbc.com
Breaking news: in one of the most productive countries / economies in the entire history of humanity, the majority of people creating that productivity do not get to enjoy the rewards of that productivity.
same as it ever was.
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If only we were back in the good Ole days of 2019 with the economy roaring and 78% of people reporting living paycheck to paycheck according to CareerBuilder.
It's PROBABLY a measurement problem, not an actual number with insight on how people are living. People self report incorrectly to a lot of things, and paycheck-to-paycheck can mean a lot of things. We think of it as someone who might be homeless without their paycheck but someone who would have to sell some stocks or stop retirement contributions might also think of themselves as "paycheck to paycheck."
If you are working, your paycheck is probably a big part of your budget. That makes this survey question a bit meaningless.
You're spot on here. Plenty of people count maxing out their 401k and IRA as "living paycheck to paycheck", because their budgets would go upside if they missed a paycheck and did literally nothing to cover it.
Combine that with the general bias all people have to view themselves as generally normal and you get a pretty meaningless metric.
Oh, like I had to do when I moved to another apartment? I had to wipe out my (tiny) Roth IRA just to pay the deposit. My wife had to wipe hers out just to pay the movers and all the other BS fees. We now have no retirement savings and haven’t since we moved six months ago. We both had to stop contributing to our IRAs in order to continue paying the bills. We’re not even paycheck to paycheck at this point, we’re at month to month.
We just had to refinance our mortgage because our credit card debt was out of control and the payments were too high.
But it did nothing to help with student loans or medical debts.
Yeah, I had to empty my 401k to be able to just keep renting and I've decided that it's probably not worth paying towards anymore since by the time I would retire they likely would tell me I need at least 8 times whatever I could afford to put in so I'll just plan for death as my retirement like Boeing would want.
Pretty much. I’m very much resigned to the fact that I’ll be working well after the standard retirement age and will likely die at work, with nothing but debt to pass on to… nobody because I can’t afford to have children.
Boeing actually found the longer you work the shorter you live so good news you won't work past retirement you will work until you die and then retirement age won't exist. It will be a myth from the past.
And some people think the Earth is flat...
But neither population is statistically significant
Selling my stocks to pay rent would be like selling my car to pay for a bus ticket.
if you need to sell your stocks to receive value from them then you're gambling not investing and I would actually consider that the same shitty situation.
The median savings is $5,300. So at the bare minimum, 12% of America has over $5,300 in savings but considers themselves "paycheck-to-paycheck."
If you only have about 5K in savings, you need that in savings for emergencies such as medical expenses or suddenly needing to move due to rent increases. That is paycheck to paycheck.
jeez. that's the low-end of my goal for yearly savings. I generally average a bit more, at least the last few years.