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Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

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Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#101

Post by asdff »

nightski wrote: post #69
e4e78a06 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People feel like they _have_ to live in NYC/SF/LA when they make peanuts. If those people moved to the Midwest they'd have much lower CoL and probably still around the same pay. Amazon pays $15/h wherever you are.

Yeah exactly. Cost of living is so much lower and one can actually live in some very nice smaller cities with plenty of restaurants, entertainment, and nature. Good quality of life. If you are even luckier and can be a developer in those cities making 150k-200k you feel like royalty with a ton of extra money to travel often.

The only problem is in some of these places its hard to be a developer and cross 80k much less 150k. There is a reason why midwestern grads get poached to the coasts.

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#102

Post by asdff »

legitster wrote: post #41

We make 6 figures and live paycheck to paycheck... but only because I am socking away so much money into stock purchases, 401k, HSA, etc. This isn't a very good metric for determining financial health.

That's not living paycheck to paycheck, that's called a balanced budget.

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#103

Post by giantg2 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #66
giantg2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair. I guess the interesting part is that many of the people in the US want public healthcare and generally think that the international examples cover everything.

No, they think that covering something is better than covering nothing.

I think that depends on exactly who you talk to. Quite a few people I've discussed this with believe it would be a complete replacement, even for employer based insurance.

There a certainly some areas of interest to be address, like how to protect from bankruptcy even when someone has insurance, or what edge cases many of these uninsured people fit into that aren't covered by employers, the exchange, CHIP, Medicaid, and Medicare. Although in many discussions this is glossed over or not touched on at all. It would be interesting to see if requiring coverage for part time and contractors would affect anything. Especially if that would help pull people into the middle class (no idea if it would).

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#104

Post by milkytron »

soared wrote: post #57
c7DJTLrn wrote: post #49

(perhaps) unpopular observation: as tough as the economy is, most people are just bad with money. I know so many people who would rather spend money on impulse than save it. It's not even necessarily their fault - why save if house prices are still increasing faster than you can catch up with? Is it any wonder young people generally just want to splash out on whatever keeps them happy?

I agree that financial literacy is a solution to many financial woes, but it is not up to an individual to seek it out. Low income people often don’t know it’s possible to escape their poverty, much less how to do it.

> Low income people often don’t know it’s possible to escape their poverty, much less how to do it.

Idk, I think that's a pretty broad generalization. Many certainly know they can escape poverty, but the how is important.

When I was working three part time jobs just to keep my head above water and have some amount savings, I would think to myself that this is just temporary. Eventually things will get better. I often wonder how many people fall into this "My money situation is just this way temporarily, I'll make more later at some point and things will be better"

The dangerous part is not acting to change that temporary situation. It's exhausting to do the routine of work day by day. Then taking the extra effort to get an education, find a better job, etc all become more difficult when working multiple jobs just to stay afloat.

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#105

Post by brimble »

runako wrote: post #93
brimble wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- That entire $900 for "everything else" ends up all going to your monthly employee contribution to have a family health insurance plan through your employer. Luckily they're only making you pay about a third of the premium. [EDIT] For anyone from outside the US who's getting a bit lost in all this US-centric budgeting, the TL;DR (and trend which you may have noticed in all this) is that it's insanely expensive to ha…

I was intentionally being very generous. The thing about the cost sharing you mention; it's the kind of change that companies make all the time. An extra $200 out of a family's monthly check can be ruinous.

Yeah, and those numbers only ever seem to go one way, with no end in sight considering that (last I checked) insurance premiums are still increasing faster than base inflation.

Between the savings crisis in every generation past the Boomers (worse with each subsequent generation), and healthcare costs going ever-upward, I have a hard time seeing how we're going to have a strong economy in 20 or so years as more and more of our consumer base gets ground into paste by the wheels of The System and can no longer drive the economy with spending, yet we still don't seem to be anywhere near fixing any of that.

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#106

Post by asdff »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #13
kitkat_new wrote: post #3

guess who will suffer most from global warming

The rich people who are still buying ocean-front property?

If that stuff is ever truly condemned a level of government will pay them fair market rate (1), and there will be finagling to ensure that rate is appropriate. You forget that this is a country that has seen the mississippi flood its banks for three centuries, and rather than not develop these flood prone areas we opt to develop them, allow them to be destroyed, and offer federally subsidized flood insurance to rebuild them to be inevitably destroyed again in the future.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sunken_City

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#107

Post by JoeAltmaier »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #58
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a hard problem. Texas has 27 million residents. And 2 Senators. If they spent an hour a day talking to constituents and spent 15 minutes with each one, it would take 16,875 years to talk to each one, once.

The only people senators want to talk to is their donors. Money is speech.

There was even a SchoolHouse Rock episode about that - how lobbyists represent money, and money represents people, so it's all nice and democratic!

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#108

Post by zamfi »

LiquidPolymer wrote: post #88

I’m a relative newcomer to a comfortable, middle class life in the U.S. One of my biggest terrors is falling back into poverty. However, most of my friends and colleagues are all too happy to live beyond their means. People I know who have large, immaculately well cared for homes with gardeners and German cars in the driveway live paycheck to paycheck. One realtor I know never sets aside enough money to pay her subst…

Or: your friends and colleagues have never lived in poverty and don't fear it as much as they fear losing the other trappings you mention.

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#109

Post by bittercynic »

LiquidPolymer wrote: post #88

I’m a relative newcomer to a comfortable, middle class life in the U.S. One of my biggest terrors is falling back into poverty. However, most of my friends and colleagues are all too happy to live beyond their means. People I know who have large, immaculately well cared for homes with gardeners and German cars in the driveway live paycheck to paycheck. One realtor I know never sets aside enough money to pay her subst…

My situation is not so different from yours, and I wonder how common we are. Maybe a pretty large fraction of Americans live a thrifty life and are quietly baffled by our peers' extravagance.

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#110

Post by giantg2 »

ryandrake wrote: post #29
giantg2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree for the general population. But shouldn't a job paying 6 figures have decent insurance? I have two dependents with major health issues, hitting out of pocket max every year. Still I am able to save for retirement and not live paycheck to paycheck. I do not earn 6 figures.

Even with decent insurance, a chronic heath issue can easily result in bankruptcy or having to live paycheck to paycheck, especially if you trip up on any of the landmines like going "out of network" or having a procedure that your insurance decides they don't want to pay for. The system is set up to extract the maximum amount of money from the patient they think they can get away with. And don't even get me started…

I'm aware of the BS they pull. I've spend numerous hours on the phone this week trying to get a prescription filled. I have to pay out of pocket, but they aren't able to submit the claim for it to count towards my deductible. Why?

Because they decided to designate a generic medication as a name brand. So even though it was 100% covered last year, now I have to pay 100% ($175/month) until the deductible is hit. I'm also forced to use s specific chain. But they couldn't file the claim toward my deductible because the software system at the chain wouldn't allow for it to be submitted as a brand name (because it's truly a generic). So this whole fiasco is because they decide to designate a generic as a name brand just so they can charge us more, and the geniuses making this change didn't even check to see if their system could handle that new business process.

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