• Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    It is a mystery, I guess we’ll never know.

    And don’t forget, THE FED isn’t a banking cartel! These bankers serving terms on the board are filled with love and affection for us, their little proles. THANK YOU FED THANK YOOOOUUU YOUR CRUMBS ARE DELICIOUS

    • ikt@aussie.zone
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      2 days ago

      Well I mean when you say 8 in 10 are living paycheck to paycheck that got my ears up, sounds like BS to me, Americans are the heaviest spending nation on earth but you’d think they’d do a little better than 80% of them being 1 missed payday away from being broke

      In contrast, the Federal Reserve found that 54% of Americans have emergency savings to cover three months of expenses. Bankrate found that while 59% of Americans are uncomfortable with their level of emergency savings, 34% are living paycheck to paycheck.

      https://econofact.org/factbrief/is-there-a-consensus-that-a-majority-of-americans-are-living-paycheck-to-paycheck

      • lemmyman@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Also, supposedly 41% of people earning 300-500k/yr are “paycheck to paycheck.”

        I couldnt find it just now, but there was a profile I read on one such person a while back. Of course, after paying private school tuition for 3 kids, monthly payments on their two Mercedes, and maxing out two 401ks, two iras, and hsa…they didn’t have much money left over every month.

        So I’m willing to believe that the OOP was more about this than about actual hand-to-mouth situations

        • jacksilver@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Yeah, paycheck to paycheck doesn’t mean you are scrapping to get by, it means your monthly income is about the same as your monthly expenses.

          That means it’s not about your income or wealth, just cash in vs cash out. Why this can be misleading is that if you make $300k and are month to month, that means selling assets or filling chapter 11 bankruptcy could fix your finance problems. However, someone with a small income is probably already doing all they can do to survive. Both fit the definition, but their situations are vastly different.

    • forrgott@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Well, actually, lots of working and dying anyway. Cause any emergency you’re fucked

  • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    It is a valid question.

    How exactly do we quantify this concept because if its self reporting, I guarantee it includes people who have larger incomes claiming they are living pay check to pay check. These people should not be lumped with those who are struggling to afford a basic quality of life.

    • Golden@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      Paycheck to paycheck can be a pretty broad term. I worked at the bottom rung in healthcare scraping by and had to endure listening to people making 3x what I made talking about when their check was gonna hit the bank. It’s easy to be broke when you have a spending problem

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        seriously. I had a client who brought in six figures per month after expenses. He still barely scraped by because he (1) was in major debt which he never paid down, only refinanced, (2) kept renovating his house unnecessarily (3) refused to stop taking vacations to Liberia (4) for some reason his wife is credibly accused of war crimes which occurred after they got married.

        i was a college student and i had better credit, but he had access to more liquid funds. it was weird. if he missed a week of work, he’d be fine. if he missed two, he could not handle the pileup of bills. i could take a couple months off work and be fine. like i said, weird.

        my old boss found some criminally interesting clients.

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I had a boss years ago who owned a temp agency. When he bought the business it was giving him $40,000 per month in profits but this had dropped to $25,000 per month – probably because he spent his day playing solitaire on his computer and listening to Rush LImbaugh instead of, you know, actually doing anything to benefit the business. I had the pleasure once of watching him berate his two receptionists (who made $7.25 an hour and had nothing whatsoever to do with the success of the business) for this drop in his income. He was friends with a bunch of west coast venture capitalists who were each worth hundreds of millions of dollars and his “poverty” absolutely burned him to his core.

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Americans are famous for living beyond their means. Obviously there are a lot of genuinely poor people. But there are also many that just aren’t financially responsible.

      • remotedev@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        That really should be what’s taught in schools instead of trying to teach them to pass some tests to get the schools money

    • wieson@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      I think, if your savings can’t cover your basic needs for a month, you’re in it. If you miss one paycheck, your life basically falls apart. It also means, if you have a sudden cost (car repair, water pipe burst, or illness in the USA) that is more than a monthly paycheck (which in turn is more than your savings), you’re done.

    • JstAnthrUsr@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      While people like to dramatize their own Situation, wouldnt it be pretty easy to define it AS people who have as much spending as they have income without being able to save [amount].

      If we want to exclude people who just dont save their money: people who have as much fixed spending as they have income

    • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net
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      2 days ago

      I know a lot of white people in America who don’t care if Donald Trump is crowned dictator, because they think they’ll be fine. They want America to get as horrible as possible for the working class, because they think it’ll inspire the working class to rise up like Karl Marx said. They complain about the Democratic candidate in every election and say “not good enough, I’m staying home”. They think one starving Gazan child is a good reason to create a thousand more. They give “critical” support to Russia and the CCP, because they think western imperialism is the only kind worth opposing.

      I know a lot of communists. There’s no overlap between the two groups.