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62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds

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Re: 62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds

#101

Post by 6stringmerc »

deckard1 wrote: post #43
patio11 wrote: post #5

There's a conversation to be had about many Americans living in precarious financial situations, but the reason why most Americans don't currently view their savings accounts as priorities is because in the current interest rate environment savings accounts and CDs are products with vanishingly little to recommend them. The APY my bank offers is one basis point . That's $1 per year for every $10k held in the account.…

I don't think that's the case here at all. You're talking about people that are both savvy enough to have a savings account and familiar enough with investments to know that a savings account is bad compared to other investments. On top of also knowing another place to put their money (many people completely fear the stock market and all index products). The average American is just not sophisticated at all here. We'…

If there was one takeaway I was surpised by from "The Millionaire Next Door" it was, to paraphrase, high income professions like Law and Medicine tend to spend at very high rates, frequently invest poorly, and rarely accumulate a significant amount of wealth as a ratio to their income. The greatest wealth building households were two income, upper-middle class, with good, conservative savings habits. At the time of publication I think it was more valid than today, re: the change in distribution of wealth in the US over time.

Re: 62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds

#102

Post by agentgt »

To me savings is liquid cash that you have on hand. It is an emergency buffer account. Every month (or whenever I get paid) since I have been employed or my wife has I have had money taken out of our checking account and put into another account. It doesn't really matter that its savings or checking account but that I can get immediate access to the account.

When the account has gotten too big we just apply some of the money elsewhere (which is not really hard).

I understand how the truly impoverished unable to save but I'm sort of disturbed to read so many here post that they think their 401K/Roth IRA is an emergency cash account.

I actually once tried to sell stock to get liquid cash. Perhaps it was just Scottrade sucking but it took a significant amount of time... so much so that I had to use my emergency buffer (savings account). Its been awhile since I have tried so maybe things have changed.

Re: 62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds

#103

Post by cfontes »

sleazebreeze wrote: post #71
eimai134 wrote: post #13

I'll bet a lot of people have money elsewhere. However, I have a lot of friends who are poor (by that I mean that they qualify for food stamps), and it's amazing to see the way they spend money. When I was poor I bought the very cheapest shampoo ($1) and bought generic everything. The poor people I know now buy name-brand products and buy a ton of Christmas and birthday presents. My husband and I have savings but we…

My partner's family lives in government subsidized housing and they get the full array of benefits including disability and food stamps. His mother buys new luxury items like purses from Coach regularly with cash from under the table jobs. They have more TVs, newer smartphones and iPads and lots of other expensive goods, and yet they have zero savings. I don't understand the thinking there. I just hope their retireme…

You can bet your ass that the line of thinking is "They will support us"

Re: 62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds

#104

Post by mod »

rozap wrote: post #70

So 38% of Americans are have more than $1000 sitting around becoming less valuable everyday? That may be a more interesting conversation to have.

You can put me in that group, though I don't know why you have to declare me a sucker--you don't even know my motivations.

Surely you can have the conversation without tossing around insults.

Re: 62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds

#105

Post by nemo44x »

david927 wrote: post #19

A lot of people here think this is about you parse "savings". It's not: 47% of Americans say they lack the cash to pay a surprise $400 bill http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/09/...

I think the audience on this site is mainly out of touch. When you're making a fine salary it's easy to forget that most people don't. When you're spending your time looking up at those above you and positioning to get to their level (because upward mobility is an option) it's easy to forget to look at the piles of people below you where it isn't

It's easy to assume throwing $100 around here or there is normal when you're able to throw $800 on an impulse iPhone without a problem. Many people can't.

I'm probably just as guilty too.

Re: 62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds

#106

Post by s3nnyy »

Some manage to live frugally, and retire within 5 years: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-became-financially-i...

My personal savings-rate is around 80% (I spend about 1.2k CHF and make around 6.5k CHF) - I probably can also retire in five years or I will keep on working 20%-40, when I have kids.

I live in Zurich, read my story here: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland (to work in IT)" https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...)

Re: 62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds

#108

Post by mod »

arbitrage wrote: post #85
vvpan wrote: post #38

I wonder how many of those people are paying off mortgage with what would be their savings.

You should be able to pay off your mortgage and still maintain & increase savings. If you can't, you have too much mortgage.

Is there a reason, generally speaking, why you shouldn't use the excess money to pay off your mortgage faster, rather than increasing savings?

(Assuming you already have enough savings to cover emergencies etc)

Re: 62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds

#109

Post by howdoipython »

mod wrote: post #100
kristopolous wrote: post #65

So what do we do about this? Should we have a society where people are working full-time and living paycheck-to-paycheck? Is that a fair and equitable thing? After we fix our government corruption in this country, we should look towards more socialism - I'd rather live in a society that houses homeless children, cares for its disabled, helps its sick, and empowers its poor, then one that doesn't - and I think most pe…

Yeah, I share that view--where we differ is you're saying "socialism is these things, and capitalism isn't," and I disagree.

Does it really matter what it's called?

Re: 62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds

#110

Post by [deleted] »

patio11 wrote: post #5

There's a conversation to be had about many Americans living in precarious financial situations, but the reason why most Americans don't currently view their savings accounts as priorities is because in the current interest rate environment savings accounts and CDs are products with vanishingly little to recommend them. The APY my bank offers is one basis point . That's $1 per year for every $10k held in the account.…

[deleted]
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