"A Sad State Of Affairs" - Two-Thirds Of Americans Have No Emergency Savings
Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
Whenever I see one of these stories about how little Americans have available for an emergency, my blood starts to boil. I understand that poor people making $25,000 per year are forced to live paycheck to paycheck. But when 63% of all Americans can’t handle a $500 emergency, and 46% of households making over $75,000 can’t handle a $500 emergency, then they are just plain stupid, frivolous, and incapable of distinguishing between wants and needs. Delayed gratification is a trait almost non-existent among Americans today.
The first thing that infuriates me is the assumption that a $500 car repair or house repair is an unexpected emergency. It’s a fucking living expense. It’s not a fucking surprise. Your car will need new tires every few years. That’s $500 or more. Your hot water heater, air conditioner, roof, windows, etc. will need to be replaced. Everyone gets sick. That is not unexpected. Anyone who lives their life as if these expenses are a shocking surprise is a blithering idiot. And this country is crawling with blithering idiots.
So the majority of Americans can’t handle a $500 expense, but for the last two years there have been 35 million new cars “sold” to blithering idiots on credit or leases. Even though they have no money, they decide it’s a brilliant idea to commit to a 7 year payment of $300 to $500 per month on an asset that declines in value rapidly. Morons abound. These are the same people who must have their Starbucks coffee every day. These math challenged boobs could defer buying a Starbucks coffee every day, save the $3, and accumulate $750 of emergency savings in one year.
Most Americans are one paycheck away from the street
Most households struggle to cope with financial surprises.
Americans are starting 2016 with more job security, but most are still theoretically only one paycheck away from the street.
Approximately 63% of Americans have no emergency savings for things such as a $1,000 emergency room visit or a $500 car repair, according to a survey released Wednesday of 1,000 adults by personal finance website Bankrate.com, up slightly from 62% last year. Faced with an emergency, they say they would raise the money by reducing spending elsewhere (23%), borrowing from family and/or friends (15%) or using credit cards to bridge the gap (15%).
This lack of emergency savings could be a problem for millions of Americans. More than four in 10 Americans either experienced a major unexpected expense over the past 12 months or had an immediate family member who had an unexpected expense, Bankrate found. (The survey didn’t specify the impact of that expense.) “Without emergency savings, you may not have money to cover needed home repairs,” says Signe-Mary McKernan, senior fellow and economist at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit organization that focuses on social and economic policy. “Similarly, without emergency savings, people could raid their retirement account.”
The findings are strikingly similar to two other reports, one by the U.S. Federal Reserve survey of more than 4,000 adults released in 2014. “Savings are depleted for many households after the recession,” it found. Among those who had savings prior to 2008, 57% said they’d used up some or all of their savings in the Great Recession and its aftermath. And another survey of 1,000 adults released last year by personal finance website GOBankingRates.com found that most Americans (62%) have less than $1,000 in their savings account (although that doesn’t include retirement or other investment accounts).
Why aren’t people saving? Millions of Americans are struggling with student loans, medical bills and other debts, says Andrew Meadows, a San Francisco-based producer of “Broken Eggs,” a documentary about retirement. Central bankers hiked their short-term interest rate target last month to a range of 0.25% to 0.50% from near-zero, but that’s still a small return for savings left in bank accounts. Indeed, personal savings rates as a percentage of disposable income dropped from 11% in December 2012 to 4.6% in August 2015, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and now hover at 5.5%.
More money and education can help. The latest Bankrate survey found that savings increased with income and education: Just 46% of the highest-income households ($75,000-plus per year) and 52% of college graduates lack enough savings to cover a $500 car repair or $1,000 emergency room visit. And while those figures could still be lower, Americans are willing to cut back on at least some expenses when money is tight: 58% say they’re “very/somewhat” likely to cut back on eating out, are likely to decrease their cable bill and 41% are likely to spend less on coffee at places like Starbucks, while 39% will seek out lower-cost cellphone bills.
But while unemployment is falling (5% in November 2015 versus 5.8% in November 2014) and the Affordable Care Act has given an estimated 16.4 million people access to medical care, the amount of wealth held by the middle class is shrinking. The share of income held by middle-income families has plunged to 43% of households in 2015 versus 62% in 1970, according to a report released last month by the nonprofit think tank Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C.
* * *
There are millions of brain dead Americans who are going to reap a whirlwind of consequences when this shit show implodes. They’ll be wailing and gnashing their teeth when their years of living for today catches up to them. Too fucking bad. The only way to accumulate wealth is to spend less than you make. It’s a lesson they failed to heed, and they will regret it for the rest of their pitiful lives.
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Its not the folks who vote that decide,, it the folks who count the votes.
Double post , sorry
It's not the folks who count the votes, it's the folks that create the money that pays the folks who count the votes.
Its not the folks who vote that decide,, it the folks who count the votes.
I think I have $500 in my BOB...
not fair....Why save when fed for last decade has been penalizing savings and confiscating from savers?
I still drive a toyota 4x4 truck that I bought a decade ago for 500 bucks.
I drive a $60K car that goes 0-60 in 4.1 seconds. Cuz I can. No debt, stacks of cash. Too easy.
Well if they stop buying the coffee, the barista's are out of a job and can no longer tip them at Applebee's.
So there's that.
Doesn't surprise me,, the average American is conditioned to BUY, BUY, BUY, CONSUME, PROCREATE, WATCH TV,, oh wait that's the movie "They Live".
The sheep will do and act as they are programmed,, by design. Ether a movie or real life.
Couple of movies that hit on that point,, "They Live" and "The Joneses" Both worth watching.
RIP, Rowdy!
I am a millennial, born in 1986. Husband, Father, Homeowner, Bachelors Degree. You know, the "rare" kind who actually worked for everything I have. Came from a blue-collar father and stay-at-home mother. From my perspective, The American Dream that the older "adults" care about and cherish is complete bullshit. America hasn't been a good country since the 1800's, nevermind great. Buying cheap Chinese electronics to fill your cul-de-sac McMansion and driving your private-schooled kids to sports practice in an over-sized SUV doesn't make you great. I can't believe how long I bought into the notion that a happy and successful person is one who goes to college and successfully integrates into a society of over-fed, manbaby, 9 to 5 office clowns. I pray for the day when this vapid and soulless society crumbles.
Your goal should be to beat the Jews at their game. Debt is slavery. It was designed that way,, to keep you subservient and controlled.
I can't say I share your hopes for a crumbing society, but I am prepared and it is on the way
"I pray for the day when this vapid and soulless society crumbles." What will you do then? Hopefully that home you own has a prepper stash, because it would get ugly.
Born in 1986 and you believed that shit?
Kinda says something about education and learning.
Don't really care how you pray.
What exactly are you doing to make your culture any better, other than permanently leaving.
Unfortunately, you already seem to have spawned.
"The American Dream that the older "adults" care about and cherish is complete bullshit. "
You get it. You totally get it.
Americans are dominated by bankster controlled governments, which have been fleecing them to exhaustion for many generations. The only way that kind of government has prepared for emergencies is to have prepared to impose democidal martial law. INDEED, TOO BAD, SO SAD!
Given those social facts, Jim Quinn offers superficial advice:
Within a MAD Money As Debt system, the only way to accumulate personal wealth is to try to take personal advantage of those systems which make "money" out of nothing as debts for everyone else. Of course, that "wealth" only exists within that MAD fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system.
The superficial advice to "spend less than you make" ONLY makes sense IF there was still some real "free market capitalism." However, the MAD Money As Debt systems have become about 99% of the public "money" supply. Since that kind of "money" is actually NEGATIVE CAPITAL, it has annihilated "free market capitalism." Since the economic system within which it makes sense "to spend less than you make" now represents less than 1% of how the real world operates, Jim Quinn's views make less than 1% sense, but rather, are more than 99% bullshit!
The entrenched debt slavery systems have already generated numbers which have become debt insanities. There is NOTHING within those established systems which is a mathematically plausible way to resolve those debt insanities. Since the debt controls were always backed by the death controls, the only ways that the debt insanity problems can be realistically resolved would be through death insanities. The only ways to MAYBE be more realistic about the real problems would be efforts that attempted to steer the eruptions of death insanities towards developing better death control systems in the longer term.
However, given that what now exists are globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of force from atomic bombs, better death controls would have to be based upon profound paradigm shifts in the ways that people perceived those. The established monetary and taxation systems can NOT be "reformed." There could only be some sort of "revolutions." Such revolutions can not happen until the failures to "reform" the systems allow those systems to cause their own insane destruction. Revolution will not emerge in any sane ways, since it will result from the psychotic breakdowns of the established systems having been based on POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCING FRAUDS, automatically getting worse, faster ...
Of course, Quinn is correct when he asserts that:
However, since he adamantly persists in his superficial view of how and why that situation developed, he continues to offer utterly bullshit advice. Any individuals that endeavour to personally get out of debt, and "spend less than you make," ARE STILL STUCK INSIDE of the MAD Money As Debt systems, whose overall political consequences will overwhelm whatever they may attempt to do to prepare for those.
In that MAD system, if there was no debt, then there would be NO MONEY. Thinking more deeply about that should drive one to reconsider the degree to which old-fashioned advice to "spend less than you make" has become ridiculously irrelevant bullshit. That the vast majority of Americans, for generation after generation, have become "brain dead" Zombie Sheeple, was due to the implementation of a deliberate PLAN. Only upon the basis of more deeply understanding that PLAN can any realistic resolutions to those real problems be developed, which is something that relatively mainstream morons and reactionary revolutionaries like Jim Quinn are not interested in thinking about.
As merely one example of the degree to which the current social situation regarding the"brain dead" Zombie Sheeple was due to the implementation of a deliberate PLAN:
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/silent_weapons_quiet_wars.htm
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars
"Energy is recognized as the key to all activity on earth. Natural science is the study of the sources and control of natural energy, and social science, theoretically expressed as economics, is the study of the sources and control of social energy. Both are bookkeeping systems: mathematics. Therefore, mathematics is the primary energy science. And the bookkeeper can be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the bookkeeping. ... In this structure, credit, presented as a pure element called "currency," has the appearance of capital, but is in effect negative capital. Hence, it has the appearance of service, but is in fact, indebtedness or debt. ... if balanced in no other way, will be balanced by the negation of population (war, genocide)... They must eventually resort to war to balance the account, because war ultimately is merely the act of destroying the creditor ... War is therefore the balancing of the system by killing the true creditors (the public ...)"
After reading many articles by Jim Quinn, it is clear that he deliberately does not engage in deeper analysis regarding how and why governments are the biggest forms of organized crime controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. Therefore, he is able to recommend ridiculous advice, based upon ordinary people continuing to NOT understand that, as citizens, they are actually members of an organized crime gang, called their country. That millions of people are not prepared for emergencies, while the government has prepared to mass murder them, was NOT an accident. Furthermore, the only way to realistically respond to that requires recognizing how and why there was a PLAN, implemented for generation after generation, in order to drive that situation to become what it is now ... The only realistic responses to that successfully implemented PLAN should be developed within the context of how and why that PLAN worked.
However, the typical content published on Zero Hedge either fails to recognize that PLAN, or fails to respect the reasons regarding how and why that PLAN worked:
Money is NECESSARILY measurement backed by murder.
The Two-Thirds Of Americans Having No Emergency Savings are in that situation because they do not understand that, because they were conditioned to feel like they did not want to understand that.Indeed, in my opinion, Jim Quinn is another one of those who do not want to understand that, which is why he can offer such bullshit advice "to spend less than you make," despite that those people are actually living INSIDE of a runaway MAD Money As Debt system. Moreover, even those who make greater "wealth," by taking personal advantage from that kind of "money" made out of nothing as debts, are still operating INSIDE those systems whose excessive successes have become runaway criminal insanities.
People like Jim Quinn have failed to recognize the degree to which the bankster controlled governments have defrauded the vast majority of people, for generation after generation, due to the vicious spirals of POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCING FRAUDS being successful symbolic robberies of the many by the few, (ironically being done in the name of "We the People" who had become mostly "brain dead" Zombie Sheeple.) The old systems of paper frauds, backed by the force of gunpowder weapons, have become globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of the force of atomic weapons. Meanwhile, most of those few who do recognize that the banksters have successfully executed their PLAN, through the previous systems of paper frauds, rapidly becoming electronic frauds, still tend to NOT change the ways they think about gunpowder weapons having become weapons of mass destruction.
Nothing else exists than the dynamic equilibria between different systems of more or less organized lies operating robberies. Therefore, the only sensible advice would be to change the dynamic equilibria and change the systems of organized lies operating robberies. More than two thirds of Americans have no reasonable hopes other than through revolution. However, that revolution should be based upon intellectual scientific revolutions, that profoundly change the paradigms through which people perceive the death control systems that back up the debt control systems. Of course, I repeat, the only way that such "revolution" can actually start is due to the runaway debt insanities provoking corresponding death insanities. No sane person is going to start that revolution. Rather, all sane people will attempt to postpone that, despite postponement simultaneously meaning that the MAD Money As Debt systems therefore automatically drives the overall debt insanities to get worse!
As long as the vast majority of people deliberately refuse to recognize that money is necessarily measurement backed by murder, then they will continue to increasingly be victims of the implementation of the PLAN which was based upon understanding and implementing that. However, there can never be any effective ways of responding to the predicament one is placed in by being surrounded by the implementation of that PLAN other than through understanding better how and why that PLAN worked.
Your posts have done more to educate me than any book I've read thus far. LOVE your posts, RM! Keep up the great work!
RM-
Excellent link there.
Worth reposting: http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/silent_weapons_quiet_wars.htm
NM
As you may have noticed, that link was from Behold A Pale Horse, by William Cooper.
I know families who make $100k a year and are not making ends meet. And we're NOT talking about wasteful people. The cost of living is spiralling out of control.
120k a year, net in your hand, is required for a modest middle class life for a family of four.
That seems rather high. It depends on where you live and how you manage that net.
Stop spending on stupid things.
If you would give 2/3 of the population 500.000 cash savings it would be all gone within a few months. Some people just can't handle money. I will spend it mostly again on rental property for those suckers so i can spent my time on ZeroHedge.
Like when Bush did stimulus 1 in summer 2008?
Its a messy state of affairs out there in the world and if you don't grasp the situation and use every thinking moment to adjust your life to it the chances of it becoming a sad state of affairs increase.
This article reveals a serious flaw in the Internet. Reading any article by Quinn on the Internet means I have wasted time. Things were better in olden times, when any Quinn article written on paper could be usefully put to work as toilet paper, thereby saving frivolous working people the expense of real toilet paper. Once used, the paper still looks as good as new, because when you smear your crap on Quinn's crap it looks ... and smells ... the same.
That's pathetic. I'm starting to think I'm one of the richest non-Jewish men under 40 on the planet. What's my secret? Disregard females, acquire currency.
So how will this siuation effect the way people vote? Methinks they will vote for whomever promises them a chicken in every pot.
I once thought of starting the American Lobster Party.
"Two lobsters in every pot" beats a chicken in every pot every time...
Standard Disclaimer: With an elephant in one claw and a donkey in the other.
All I know is
It's somebody elses fault people don't have any savings.
/s/
My first gig out of undergrad was working for Wells Fargo. It was amazing seeing the credit problems people got themselves into. Some had real reasons (job loss, medical bills, etc.), but some absolutely did it to themselves with excessive spending. I saw one couple with six-figure revolving credit debt. Ridiculous. Another guy wanted a loan to buy a new wheelchair-accessible van for his son. He either changed his mind or didn't get approved. A couple months later, the same guy called asking for a $20k loan to buy a convertible. Some gambled themselves into financial ruin.
1 - The American marketing/advertising/corporate machine is exceptionally powerful, everywhere you go you're bombarded with messages to eat eat, consume consume, greed is good, bigger is better, Kardashiansaglargghhh...resistance, for most people, is futile. Spend time in other countries and you will immediately notice the difference, the much lower degree of bombardment.
2 - Americans from birth are taught that they are "exceptional", as a nation, as individuals, so they "deserve" the above "lifestyle". They don't, unless earned, which it usually isn't.
THEY LIVE
WE SLEEP
Well most of my emergency cash went on Christmas. This economy sucks!