Question: “If you were to face a $2,000 unexpected expense in the next month, how would you get the funds you need?”
This was a survey question posed in a
paper published by Annamari Lusardi of the George Washington School of Business, Daniel J. Schneider of Princeton University, Peter Tufano of Harvard Business School, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Here's what they found for the United States:
24.9% certainly able
25.1% probably able
22.2% probably unable
27.9% certainly unable
This is not money for a vacation or a larger television or Christmas. This is an extensive automobile repair, a health crisis, a home repair, or such. This is an unexpected expense that could affect your basic survival ability. This shows that 50% in the U.S. could not or would have trouble coming up with $2,000 when in need without resorting to what some might consider drastic measures: selling possessions, taking out a high interest payday loan, taking out other loans or credit cards, borrowing from family and/or friends.
The point here is that this is not just lower-income people or families. I know several families who consider themselves comfortably middle-class who would have to resort to the above measures to come up with actual cash in a crisis. Some live above their means but most do not. Many live on not what they have been able to do but what their parents before them were able to do.
I fall into the financially fragile category. My wages have not gone up but my expenses certainly have. I have bought lunch with the loose change from my car's ashtray. I juggle what I can and can't do without. I have worked from home because I didn't have the money to buy gas to drive to the office. To date, a payday still arrives to just get me by.
Yet, many of us who are struggling are still portrayed to be and believed to be without a good work ethic or living beyond our means or just bums. The idea of "bums" helps divide us politically and set us up against each other. Fifty-percent of the country can't all be bums, guys. Doesn't this say much more about the state of our country than about it residents?
4 comments:
Hah...bums. We wish. We always think we should have enough money, I worked my entire life from the age of 14 until I was felled by an industrial accident. We would manage somehow, but as usual, it would be a stretch. Medical emergencies kill us when they randomly happen.
Things are tough in this country right now, no doubt about that. Even though I paid in full my little cottage out here in the country with my insurance settlement, we stretch to pay the taxes every year. Our utilities and insurance and necessecities run over 1300/month.
We live a really basic life, simple, and I grow lots of our food. I don't know how people live today.
That said--think I'll mosey out to the garden and pick lunch.
Akannie - One plus..i learned to stay away from credit cards to get by. Hard lesson but a good lesson.
What did you find for lunch?:)
Well, Jude...
I picked tiny zucchinis and smallish cucumbers, lettuces, kale, chives, radishes and green onions.
Made a yummy salad to go with the chicken fajitas with rice and red beans.
I too have stayed away from the credit cards...a friend of mine (a few years ago) had over 65000 in cc debt. She said every time she got close to the limit on her cards, they would raise it. She lost her job and nearly went bankrupt. I learned a big lesson from her...and cut up the two I had and have never used them since.
Akannie - Sounds delicious!
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