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Half Of Americans Making Under $30K Have Less Than $100 In Savings
As we noted earlier, the main reason for the surge in consumer "confidence" in September was the near record surge in sentiment for those making $15,000-$25,000, which soared from 43.5 to 62.4 in the month, the most since April 2009. And whether this was due to their forecast of the future, and expectation that things will get much better, or not, we don't know, what we do know is that half all of those people whose sentiment defined the market tone today, and who may be quite instrumental in the outcome of the upcoming election (per Mitt Romney), have less than $100 in cash savings. Other findings: both males and females reported similar savings patterns, however, 55 percent of Americans with children under the age of 18 reported having less than $800 in emergency savings compared to 42 percent of those without. Findings also reflect disparities across geographic regions, with 60 percent of individuals living in both the Northeast and the West having $800 or more in savings, yet 31 percent of those living in the North Central region reported that they had less than $100. Most importantly, 23% of all Americans have less than $100 in savings to cover any emergency expenses, and 46% have less than $800. One can see why when it comes to the discussion of whether or not financial assets should be taxes, soon 46% may be the new 47%.
Visually:
And full survey results here.
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I am SICK of hearing about the damn lazy "working poor". Why can't they embrace capitalist entrepreneurialism?? There are income generating assets EVERYWHERE.
Have children? - pimp them out.
Have retired relatives? - auction them off for student medical dissection.
DAMN UNPRODUCTIVE 47% THERE IS NO EXCUSE.
They have two kidneys, two retinas, can donate blood and other fluids, sell hair, plus im guessing they can do some sorta local labor foxconn cant... Wink wink hint hint
So I am driving down the street to get to work and stop at a red light near a corner. At the Bus Stop is a white couple sitting on the bench, each with a cardboard sign reading "Need Money. Homeless. Please help." They looked bad. Then all of a sudden this gal (looked to be in her 20's) pulls out a cell phone to take a call. I asked myself...How bad can things be? So either she is a hooker or this scam is her job. If she is homeless....where do the bill for the cell phone go?
To this article.....there are two real sad situations in America. 1) Many people in America are losing their will to work, to climb the ladder, to achieve a decent life. This has been perpetuated by a government that insists on taking care of everyone. I believe that there are those who are truly needy but others that are looking for an easy way out. It's easier to sit on a bench wiht a cardboard sign and ask for money rather than actually looking working is becoming more the norm than the exception. 2) The Financial literacy of Americans is around a 3rd grade level. I was at a fast food and there is waht looks to be an average Joe in front of me. The cashier says "that will be $5.17." This guy hands her a bunch of waded up money. She takes the bills, counts them out. He had given her $17. She replied "You've given me too much." He said "Oh...ok...then I'll have a Vanilla shake." Is this laziness? Is it stupidity? Is it a complete void of math and finance? We teach kids Alegebra II in high school but they don't have common sense when it comes to finances but we expect them to succeed in life. Sadly, this is becoming more typical.
Right, if only people could get that "will to work" back, the jobs that pay a living wage would follow. Hopey changey.
Maybe your anecdotal evidence was just some dude who was celebrating 420. In any case, I haven't seen such financial illiteracy when it comes to currency, so i think you're slice of life is unique.
Spare me your homilies.
Cell phones are not really a luxury anymore. Landlines cost more and if you're homeless or shift around they are practically useless. Cells are dirt cheap unless you're an idiot who thinks "unlimited everything" is a great deal.
I disagree.
My land line expense (of just under $30/month, with unlimited local calling) is significantly less expensive than ANY cell phone plan that is available to me except for the most laughably limited one. That is one cogent reason, among many, why I refuse to own a cell phone.
Face it: Cell phone ownership is far more an affectation, and just another aspect of successful mass-marketing, consumerism, and the pervasive and utterly sick electronic gadget obsession of modern Westerners, than it is a "necessity". I am not that important to NEED a cell phone --- nor are you.
Wal Mart TracFone $9.99- $14.99 regular price. Comes with 10 minutes airtime.
Monthy cost of the cards works out to be est. $8.00-$10.00 a month. Least possilbe amount of airtime last time I looked was a 60 minute card with 60 days for $19.99
There are tons of things you can do (coupons, codes, etc) to get double minutes, etc. A 400 minute card with 1 year activation time is $99.00. That works out to $8.25 a month + minimal cost of the phone.
Some of the cheaper phones are quite nice. Motorola, etc. Most of the phones come with a coupon book to get better deals using codes, etc.
The coverage is excellent where I live.
Considering a phone is a necessity to get a job, I would not judge a homeless person that has one.
Phone and bus pass would probably be my first purchases if I was on the street with nothing.
Consider if you were in their position. How hard it would be to beg for money. Many of these people are sick, mentally ill, afraid of the system because of warrants, etc.
Find your local shelters and make a visit. Go for a sermon and a meal. It is a life changing experience and will make you VERY thankful for the things you have.
If you really want the whole experience, try staying the night at one (provided they have extra beds). Talk about rough. Consider how it would be to spend the night in a room full of snoring, farting, coughing, men.
I speak with homeless people constantly and some are afraid of the shelters because they are afraid they will get sick by staying the night. They would rather sleep out.
Flip the shelter a nice donation while you are there. These charity based shelters do a tremendous service by keeping these people off the streets, lowering crime rates, etc.
They help them find jobs, give them health care, and a huge list of other services for people who have fell through the safety net.
Most of the shelters can take someone who is completely destitute and put them back in decent job + a home again. The people who work and volunteer at them are mostly saints.
Do unto others...
Not just that... but to all those deriding those with "smartphones". You can get a used one for very cheap, or even free. And if you are basically living on the street, it means anywhere there's wifi, you have internet. It's a camera to protect yourself from cops. It's a GPS to know where the hell you're going. And none of that even requires a data plan or even service to work.
If you add in google voice, you have a phone number and don't even have to get service. Make/get your calls over wifi, check your messages. All for FREE minus the cost of a phone, which are very cheap second hand.
Your comments presume that one lives in a city or at least a densely-populated urbanized area.
I happen to live in thinly-populated area with many mountains and utterly shitty cellphone service and coverage --- one can literally go two or three miles from ANY cell phone tower around here and find one's cellphone useless. And even for those not in such a situation, there is the shitty quality of calls, the constant dropped calls, the ability of the government and others to track your every move, not to mention how cellphone use tends to feed the now-now-now, instant-gratification syndrome and inability to think more than one minute ahead of most people nowadays. I HATE what their widespread usage has done to civility, responsibility and maturity, which is to say, having diminished them.
No, you can keep your shitty cell phones. Life was fine and LESS expensive before them, and mine is just fine without them. But by all means keep up with the Joneses and buy the latest multi-hundred-dollar mass-marketed gadget if you feel you must, and I will continue to look at all you walking around in public, oblivious to your surrender of privacy and civility, with unmitigated scorn.
Probably a free governent phone!
Many families have more than 1!
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/story/2012-06-01/low-income-lifeline-plan/55315532/1
Do you really expect people in that income range to be able to accumlate savings? Most of them are trying to get out of debt and are not earning a living wage. Tough to put something aside when every penny is going towards getting by.
This tells you something about the size of the retail market for gold bullion.
One day everyone in America will empty their checking accounts and frantically run to the store to buy all the gold they can afford which is... 1/10 of an ounce.
Gold prices will be driven by the hoarding and remonetization actions of nations, central banks and the ultra rich who insist gold has no value.
One exogenous event away from default...
Shit! Stubbed my toe and now it's infected... welp, off to live on the street I guess!
well no shit, my savings are zero to keep my checking from going negative....
Ben what the Fuck are you doing? Force the dishoarding from the Rich and corporations now, crack-open the dollar bills cash hoard from those guys , and pronto !!
Rich guys on Zerohedge, I do not know how to define it.
Ok the guys on this blog making more than say 500K net of taxes in earnings. Do not hoard your dollars, be patriotic and spend some money, Ben is chasing you. Your cash sits there uselessly, spend some money for Christ[s sake!!! Make your girlfriend or wife, mistress, gay lover, dog whatever happy and inject your cash in the circulation. It is a moral and patriotic duty.
Go in teh stores and spend some money, look underneath the product, and if it says made in America buy it.
Buffet is a moron, if everyone is doing the same and is spending nothing and trying to accumulate MORE financial assets, there is no economy left, there is no economy to support those financial assets, you boxed yourself into a nice little corner. So no choice Rich guys and Corporations Spend, let s spend!
Buffet is trying to moralize the guys working in the financial markets that he is a good guy because unlike them he does not spend, fucking asshole. Sell all of your shares old moron, wack the hedgies on the stupid side of things believing in Santa Klaus financial assets always win, and inject that cash in the real economy instead of ~buying back your shares~ which produces nothing, no trickle down effect for the people at the bottom.
Obviously, this is a sign that the corporations are not doing there jobs very well! There's still all that money laying around unclaimed.
i dont know about you all but ive found in my travels that bad things financially tend to happen to dumb people. Yea theres bad luck no doubt but for the most part the first is largely true. What i found funny is as always every election number one worry is economy. Yet, its far from number one on the time people want to spend understanding it and trying to make it work for them.
Less than $100 in savings, but with a $700 flat screen TV, $100 cable/internet bill each month, iPhone or Galaxy SIII for all family members, $200 monthly wireless bills, and a house full 'stuff'.
Maybe it's because Americans are not interested in saving bank credits, rather they have their savings in money as defined by the U.S. Constitutions hidden from the tax man.
Well it's a nice thought anyway.
Pathetic. Nothing more to say.
well that;s their own fault for not being in risky assets while the bernanke does QE
Guess who owns CASHNET??? Give him a call!
Goldstein, Alexander domainmaster@cashnetusa.com Cash Net USA 200 W Jackson Blvd Suite 2400 Chicago, Illinois 60605 United States +1.3125689752
Source: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/ENOVAFINANCIAL.COM
I have 7 troy ounces silver, does that count as savings?
The other part of the story is their smart phone bill is a hundred bucks a month.
Probably $100+
I have $60 in savings.......and I'll probably get some weed with it later.
I just blew my last $15 on some Carlo Rossi merlot. Its on sale this week
When they unleash that $100, the economy is going to the moon!!!!!!
No way!
These people on the drawings are not representative Americans, and I can prove that, non of them is obese, are we in a dreamworld or what ...
So that means that 50% have $7mill worth of gold bullion and 1968 Mustang in their garage, all is well!
Lost my $100.00 in a tragic boating accident...
Unadjusted for inflation low-income persons and families revenue have not changed in 20 years. The price of cars (1995 civic:13,000$) and food (1995 gallon of Milk:$2.96) are about the same, electronic is even less expansive now ! (1995 75 MHz pc = 2000$). The only thing that have changed in the past 20 years is the housing cost (up 300%) !!! Low-income families have become bankers serfs.
I bought a custom built 166Mhz with a 17" monitor in Oct. 1994 $2300+tax. That was about a month after they released the 200 Mhz processor. They were on the shelf at Circuit City for $2000 with no monitor & only 16 MB RAM. Packard Bell sucked then and sucks now, too, where they are still in business.
I have been buying and using desktop pc's daily since the early 1980's. I always by technology that is about 1 year old. My first one year old PC used, cost me $300 ( a PC Jr and a waste of money). Since then I have replace them about every 3 years. Either having them custom built, or buying a new one with year old technology. From a local builder. I always paid between 500 and 600 dollars. I am waiting for delivery of a STX custom built PC with a Intel Core I3 processor, 4 MB ram, and a solid state hard drive and a old tech but good quality video driver GeForce GT 430 1GB. With 500 watt power supply, 22X SATA DVDRW optical Drive, and a Wireless N PCIe x1 Network Adapter. All on a Asus P8H61-M LX2 R2.0 LGA1155 mATX Motherboard. FreDos on which I wlll install Ubuntu Linux. From Tigerdirect. SYX H61 No OS
Price as configured, $600.
My PC price to run current applications has remained about constant in US Dollars since about 1990. I have used them daily and never felt the need for the latest coprocessor.
Ammo and whiskey are a much better store of wealth anyway. Buck Fernanke.
Life is just that much more exciting when you're living it so close to the edge.
How about a survey of people over that $25k ceiling so I can compare myself. Goodness, I have more in PMs then they have in savings. Come to think of it, I have more in stored food and ammo then they have in savings.
would love to see an infographic for physical cash
Savings? In many 'savings accts.' today the monthly fees far surpass anything you would earn in interest...even if one had more than 100$ in the account.
That is what a Century of sheeple being fleeced gets to!
The obvious solution to this problem, by those doing the fleecing, is to slaughter those sheeple, after they have been fleeced and fleeced to the point where they are not worth fleecing anymore.
When things get that bad, and there is nothing effective that one can do about it, then what is left ???
Another false flag attack, and democidal martial law, is the most probable future for most of those sheeple. They were always inside money-as-debt systems, where the best way to participate was to go deeper into debt. They were unable to change that system ... and now, as we approach the end game, there is even less left that they could do about their tragic situation.
Sheeple do not need a plan for the future, since those who do their planning for them have already decided to slaughter them off. Indeed, even any resistance to that will probably end up being integrated into another false flag scenario, to justify doing whatever it takes to slaughter them off even faster.
IF the sheeple had a plan for the future, then they would not be sheeple. IF the sheeple had a plan for the future, then that would have to go through profound revolutions to change the fundamental systems that control their lives. HOWEVER, the same runaway triumphs of Huge Lies, backed by Violence, that created the reality of those sheeple in the past is STILL going to control their reality in the future. I.e., fleeced and fleeced, until suddenly slaughtered.
Great news brought to us by folks that find this news exhilerating and are working hard to keep the numbers where they are or maybe even worse.
No I'm not referring to Zero Hedge. The actual story is from the people who do payday loans with astronomical interest rates which tend to keep the poor people as poor as possible.
Make sure to kick them while they're down on their luck.