The advice in that article is primo out of touch and humorous. They give statistics that people’s savings and assets are down X amount, and the first advice is save for an emergency. Running out of savings?! Just save more, five head.
If you stop eating Starbucks and drinking avocado toasts, you will be fine
I love that the guy who penned that gold was one of the world’s richest people, and not that long ago called for increasing unemployment, so that the worker learns his place again.
Ok, yeah! I’ll just set aside the (checks notes) almost nothing I have left after food, rent, utilities, gas, and my exactly two streaming services.
Now ask the CEOs how they’re doing.
Mitch McConnell staring off into space - Good thing Americans had those stimulus checks to live off of for the past 30 months.
Speaking of, where did that money come from?
Did they just print it?
Weird how when it comes to helping the working class, taxing the rich is never an option. But when it comes to helping the ruling class, you can tax the working class and print money.
Fun fact: more money was printed during the pandemic than in the history of the US. And 80+% of it went to the top 1%.
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I got a second degree in computer science to try and get ahead and instead entered the market just in time for hundreds of thousands of layoffs so now I’m stuck making less than I did at my last job meanwhile inflation and rent have increased the cost of living by like 50%.
Edit: oh and suddenly WFH = evil according to every CEO because of their billions of dollars of real-estate investments
Hey now, it’s not just office space investments! It’s also useless middle managers who don’t actually do anything useful but don’t think people working from home do any work because they can’t be stared at to make sure they’re working constantly
I found out my wife was pregnant about a week before shit really hit the fan. We were completely prepared, had money saved up and everything.
The covid hit. We both lost our jobs, and unemployment wasn’t nearly enough to cover the bills. I couldn’t find another job anywhere.
We lost everything. Both of my cars got repoed, I get eviction notices every single month because rent is behind. We pulled out credit cards for food because we don’t qualify for assistance.
Slowly, we both got jobs, I got lucky and jumped right back into my career that I love, and we’re still trying to get on our feet. The credit cards are killing us.
Oh, and when our daughter was born, she had to be life flown to another city because she almost passed away (long story). 150k bill. After insurance.
There was an (executive order ?) during covid where you weren’t allowed to receive a large bill from medical emergencies and be required to pay it, if you had insurance.
Have you heard of/looked into this?
They could send a bill, but they would call it ‘an accident’, and then ask if you wanted to pay it out of the kindness of your heart. If you don’t, they just write it off on their books and call it a day.
Source: happened to me
That would be amazing if true. I know it happened to you, but still sounds too good to be true in the US of A.
I wanna say part of the stipulation was that it couldn’t be a surprise bill. Like I had a surgery that the insurance said they would cover 100% after my deductible. I have the surgery, and get bills from every mf in the building that day, basically, 'cause everyone billed individually as contractors in some way. Some contractor nurses they had called in to fill in, the anesthesiologist, supplies used by a doctor, the homeless guy panhandling outside, I forget what else, all billed separately. None of it pre-authorized, and I had already contacted the hospital and my surgeon’s office previously to try to prevent some nonsense like this. Anyway, I called and bargained some of it down, as insurance gets a higher bill, which they passed onto me as it wasn’t pre authorized, then spent months trying to save up to pay this additional burden of debt. I was looking into getting cheap legal counsel 'cause it was gonna be near impossible, it was a struggle, etc. etc. So I called them back one day seeing if I could negotiate further, got transferred a few times, until someone was nice enough to explain to me what I said earlier, and that if I just ignore it, they’ll write it off before the end of the year, but if I could make any kind of payment, as everyone put work in and it leaves “them” high and dry. Just to highlight the gouging, one of my bills before the surgery was over a thousand bucks for some gauze, bandaids, and a cane from my initial emergency visit (also billed separately from the rest of the visit). I saw how much insurance had already paid the surgeon and hospital, and shrugged my shoulders and slept fine that night not giving them another cent. I thanked the Ctulhus for liberals.
Edit: some further advice for the commenter and anyone else, Reddit was a good place to learn tactics on how to negotiate medical debt down, it also gave me a bit of hope, knowing there were plenty of “success” stories. I’ve been able to negotiate other medical bills down by massive percentages.
Yes, let’s raise rent 40% just as people are financially disadvantaged… That is sustainable.
Increasing the money supply didn’t help the poor and instead helped the rich just like every other time we’ve tried that?! I can’t believe it!
Increasing the money supply would have been fine if it had gone into working people’s pockets, infrastructure, jobs, housing, and other productive uses. But yeah, when it’s just pumped into the stock market or funneled through business via PPP then, go figure, the rich get richer while everyone else suffers.
It’s rather negligent of the article to ignore inflation on other areas such as basic needs as well such as price gouging for toilet paper, the immediate war with Russia that suddenly caused gas spikes, and the continuing shrinkflation of basic necessities to be considered ‘luxury’. Bread for the fam shouldn’t be considered a luxury.
rather negligent of the article to ignore inflation
Also, while we note that high prices hurt directly, in major ways the Fed’s response to that (it’s been raising interest rates to reduce the money supply) is a major source of the pain associated with the high prices/price gouging we’re calling inflation.
Higher interest rates mean higher mortgage payments (or rent pressure), etc. This way, price gouging leads to higher profits, and if you hold bonds, also higher profits there- while consumers of those things are doubly-fucked
Over here in the, “no fucking shit” category of news…
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I do want to own a home at some point before death, so I’ve cut back spending across the board. I wouldn’t say I’m financially worse off, just working as many double shifts as possible (I work in healthcare, this is easy to do right now…also not a good thing) and not enjoying life at all for…3 continuous years now.
$115k needs to be your annual salary in USD to buy a home right now, supposedly, I read that somewhere (maybe CNN?) in the past 2 weeks. I make nowhere near that.
Factor in inflation on grocery prices & everything else, an mind you I shop at an Aldi’s and a wholesale club, it’s not a very easy time out there. Sometimes it feels like I’m saving for something totally unrealistic.
That number is very misleading.
That’s the average salary needed to afford the average home.
But the average home in Miami or San Francisco is much more expensive than the average home in Wichita. And while prices are inflating everywhere, that does not mean you can’t afford a home without earning that much. The only thing that number tells you is that you need to earn more today than you did ten years ago.
I would talk to a bank about what kind of loan you can qualify for, and assume you can afford about half of that. Because they’ll absolutely lend you more than you can reasonably afford.
Thanks, you actually accidentally postponed my daily depressive moment in regards to this topic, ha. :)
“Gee…you f***ing think?” -Me, single income father of three-
That’s funny, I thought the fed printed an extra $5 trillion during covid? I wonder where it all could have gone!
Uh how is it not higher?
Who are these 20%ers?
I think some people, myself included, managed to stay stable, so that’s probably a big chunk of it. I got a new job in June 2020 that was enough of a raise to make up for inflation, so while I’m not ahead of where I was 3 years ago, I was at least in the same mediocre position I started in. That said, I’ve had $3k in dental bills since July because dental insurance is pretty much a scam, soooo I’m now officially fucked, but I was doing ok.
I hate to break it to you, but if $3,000 in bills is enough to fuck you, you were never as stable as you thought. Welcome to the 80%
I said I’m not worse off, not that I’m doing well. Stable meant I was basically in the same position at the end of the pandemic as was at the start.
People like me and my wife. Wife is in healthcare and I am in automation. Wife gets as much overtime as she wants and I got several pay raises as suddenly companies found that they couldn’t depend on just buying the same things forever and ran out of workers.
Oh don’t worry I am sure the boot is ready to crush us both like a bug. Just ignoring us for the time being.
I may be a 1%er in this context. 49 at the start, had just scored a job paying double salary and benefits both (<-worked hard for this bit, for many years), Habitat for Humanity mortgage (no interest or land taxes), all that.
COVID killed mom (grandma really), got some inheritance, bought a couple of acres of swamp. It’s mine and I play there every weekend. Long story, but the land is a big deal in my life.
Went nuts buying stuff I always wanted and couldn’t afford before inflation really set in. I wouldn’t/couldn’t buy most of that stuff at these prices.
And now I’m about to get paid on the last of the inheritance and pay my little house off.
I know this sort of comment isn’t welcome, but you asked. Dumb luck mostly, and I recognize that.
And speaking of dumb luck, I’m getting married in 2-weeks to the finest woman I’ve ever met. (OK. I made a LOT of effort, but still, lots of luck as well) Been with a lot of women, so I’ve failed a lot, not this time. She’s gushing to her Filipina friends ATM. I don’t speak Tagalog or I might relate a bit of the conversation, all sounds good though. (Nothing private of course.)
Glad things are going well for you. Best of luck.
Comment is welcome! Don’t forget the prenup. Congrats!!
So my wife and I are one of them. I’ll call it as it is, we got lucky, and both work in tech.
Now that said, I “rent” (rent in quotes because the amount is almost exactly what the increase in food costs was) out a room to a good friend because she was struggling, and just last week got another friend couch surfing for who knows how long until she can get her feet under her.
A lot of us in healthcare stayed pretty stable. I don’t know of any that did “better”, but other than elective stuff, day to day dropped only a little. About 9-10% of Americans are in healthcare. I do know a lot of delivery services did well too.
Who are these 20%ers?
LOL, which income quintile do you think?
Well, I currently make more than the average household in my state, solo. So does my gf.
And we can’t afford shit.
So, you tell me? I’m in the top 5% of income in my state. I am doing way worse than I was in 2019. E erything cost double and I dont make double.
What costs double? I track my expenses very closely and have for about a decade and my essentials are up 10% at most, 7% on average. That’s food, transportation, home expenses and cloth. My recreation expenses were actually down or flat.
I feel like sit down restaurants and fast food have gone way up. Maybe not double but it feels like it. Rent is also way up. Again not double but it seems that way. Maybe that’s just my area in South Florida though.
But yeah if you own your own home and cook all of your meals at home, really this inflation hasn’t hit you as hard.
From the article, emphasis added:
The poorest 40% of households suffered an 8% drop in cash savings and the middle 40% (the U.S. middle class) also saw their bank deposits and other liquid assets topple. Only the wealthiest 20% of households are still enjoying the extra cash they stockpiled during the pandemic, with their savings about 8% above where they were in March 2020.
I’m not disbelieving your personal experience, but the article does indeed say it’s the top quintile who benefited.
The poorest 40% of households have cash savings?
What the fuck are my wife and I doing wrong?
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Spending an extra 8% on groceries just means a bit less to savings? IDK, I kind of feel like the opposite. Economic dooming ahead of an election is as natural as the sunrise, especially when there’s a Democrat in office.
They should have been born to billionaire parents. I didn’t think it was necessary at the time and was born to average parents, and while I regret my decision, I don’t think I have the right to complain.
Maybe average parents shouldn’t have had kids to not supply another wage slave to the system?
