56% of Americans can't afford a $1,000 emergency expense: We are 'living in a paycheck-to-paycheck nation,' money expert says
56% of Americans can't afford a $1,000 emergency expense: We are 'living in a paycheck-to-paycheck nation,' money expert says
The current economic environment is ideal for shopping around for high-yield savings products and building your emergency savings.
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Ok let's poll Lemmy. Upvote me if you can. Downvote me if you can't. I can so I'll keep my own upvote.
Can’t see downvotes, assume everyone is okay. New article: 190% of people on Lemmy can afford a $1,000 emergency expense
Edit: 190% was a typo, but leaving it in there
Lemmy attracts wealthy intelligent people.
Or just broadly financially literate people. I only make $34k AUD.
I'm incredibly fortunate that my parents were able to teach me financial literacy. I'm also incredibly lucky that I have the personality type to be happy "slumming it", almost taking a sick pride in how far I can make a 50c bar of soap stretch to clean my entire body, house and laundry, so living within my means has been possible even when my means is a couch in a 4 bedroom share house with 10 roommates. (some of the best years of my life, which is far from the usual sharehouse experience)
Because of a congenial illness, my start in the work force was delayed and is still partly inhibited. But I made a point to put a bare minimum of $20 from every pay cheque straight into a term deposit that I couldn't touch. When it hit $1000, it moved into a more accessible emergency account, and began saving up the term deposit again. When things are easy I bump that savings contribution up as much as I can. The emergency fund is now a comfortable 5k, with another 10k in the term deposit, that's 15 years years of savings. The only reason it's as much as it is, is because I've been incredibly lucky to have very few genuine emergencies that require immediate payment. If I can put an unexpected expense on a payment plan, I do.
There are "emergencies" I have ignored because the cost wasn't worth it. I've had 9 teeth extracted, I probably could have saved them all if I forked out a few thousand for a root canal, but it made more financial sense to just let them get bad enough that I could get them extracted for free at the dental school, since now I will never have to worry about those teeth them (I'll only have to worry about jaw bone loss).
I'm lucky that I never had to get involved with credit card debt. I didn't have "the bank of mum and dad", but between my 60 cousins and 20 friends, I can borrow $10-20 from everyone to cover something big, and pay it back slowly interest free, and I make sure I do the same for them, it's only $20 after all. I relied on that a lot when I was young and still building my emergency fund, and that's certainly a privilege not everyone has.
I'm privileged to be financially educated and have a social safety net, but by the living standards set by my country, I'm far from wealthy.
Is the poll for americans only?
I would assume since that is what the article is about. Idk
Depends. I have enough in savings to cover the cost, sure, but there's only enough in savings because I've been transferring about 25% of my paycheck to savings for the past 2 years in order to afford a wedding/honeymoon. So I'd just be pushing myself into a larger credit debt after the bills come due for the wedding services.
Wedding/honeymoon, what a fucking waste of money you've been suffering for the past two years to throw away all that hard-earned income on a one-week transitory moment 🤦♀️
Pfft, fresh fruit and eggs for breakfast. What a waste of hard earned money for a 10 minute transitory moment.
do you transfer 25% of all your income for 2 years to a fund devoted to one 10-minute breakfast of fresh fruit & eggs?
Doesn’t matter the amount of money or the time.
The fact is that creating enjoyable memories for yourself or as a couple is important for a relationship. Having a nice vacation in general is important for mental health, especially if you’re an American who likely almost never gets to be truly away from work.
Disparaging someone for saving money for a vacation is just an elitist attitude.
You could survive off of multivitamins, rice and beans for the rest of your life if you really wanted to not waste money. Yet you’re now defensive of a mediocre breakfast. So at what point does spending money on “transitory moments” become wasteful to you.