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- Around 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

- 71% of adults say that their monthly debt payments prevent them from saving.

When we say America, we can't just mean the 20% who are ok. It has to mean the 70% who aren't. America is not rich. It used to be. It is not now.

7 comments

> Around 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

Not for any meaningful definition of "living paycheck to paycheck". Per Federal Reserve studies, the percentage of the population with no excess income after paying for necessary expenses is 10-15%. That's still a lot of people but it isn't 76%.

For everyone else, it is a lifestyle choice.

Per the BLS, the median household has ~$1,000 leftover every month after all ordinary (not necessary) expenses. That includes rent, car payments, healthcare, etc.

Americans have a crazy amount of discretionary income compared to the rest of the world.

71% of adults say that their monthly debt payments prevent them from saving.

So why don't they take it out of that thousand they have at the end of each month? America is suffering economically and I don't think we help anything when we pretend it's not.

No one forced those people to take on a $1000 monthly car loan payment.

> living paycheck to paycheck.

This phrase is used so often, but I don't know how meaningful it is supposed to be

A family might make $300,000 a year and be living "paycheck-to-paycheck" while also maxing out 401k contributions, paying a mortgage on a $2 million home, and paying $80,000 a year in private school tuition.

Are we supposed to think that such a family is in worse financial shape than a family making $40,000 a year but with minimal expenses and a few months of living costs in a savings account?

It's somewhat of a mindset question and somewhat of a wealth question.

Mr $300k may have zero months in an emergency account, but be stable in his job as a doctor and not worry about finding work - and may actually "feel poor" because he barely has any "fun money" to waste and feels he can't buy coffee in the morning.

Mr $40k a year may have 6 months of expenses in the bank, saving half his income to FIRE, and know that anytime he wants to he can buy that coffee - and sometimes he does.

Net worth likely says Mr $300k is worth more than Mr $40k - but that may not be true forever, and Mr $40k may be "retired" at 50 while Mr $300k is perpetually working until death.

Who is rich, who has wealth, and who is happy? There are no clear answers.

You're missing the third question which is of definitions. There's an other person Mr $65k who after all their necessary expenses has $1k left over each paycheck that they spend on dinners out, concert tickets, vacations, etc so that at the end of the month they are left with no additional savings. Are they living paycheck to paycheck?

Maybe?

I mean, should we live in a world where the only way to create savings is by denying yourself any fun? You've picked a number, $1k, because it sounds good to support your argument, but maybe after paying for the essentials, a family has $200 left per month. Should we expect that family to never go to the movie theater, never go out to a restaurant, never splurge on a nice piece of clothing or jewelry, never do anything fun at all? Do we think it's ok for people to have to live like that?

So sure, maybe if they spend that $200 on fun stuff, it's not "living paycheck to paycheck". But maybe that's just a bad metric, or just too poorly-defined to be a reasonable way to measure anything.

Correct. We are meant to be wage slaves. That is why there is such a malaise these days. Everyone has sort of realized that we are meant to wage slave until we are dead, and our "productive" years are spent providing retirement income to the older generations.

Idk if people thought differently about this in the past, or just didn't care, or just weren't able to see the myriad ways that people get to live (social media) when they are not wage slaves. But something is wrong.

I think about this guy occasionally:

https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/how-candice-m...

Happiness for him was somewhere between having zero dollars and being $33 million in debt. His influencer wife seems to have no humility, has moved to Miami where she can continue her partying lifestyle and going to yoga classes.

Its' both maddening and saddening. To what point does the ostentatious display of wealth serve if it leads to suicide? A few years of looking rich at the cost of the rest of life? We have no choice but to assume he was willing to make that trade-off. So it's angering to think a person would believe that.

On the other hand, suicide is the ultimatum when a man thinks his pleas are unanswered. Being surrounded by old-money socialites, I can imagine the feeling of having to leave the club being a fate worse than death. But how can an average guy have any sympathy for that, much less this guy's own feelings of himself.

America is very very rich, the average person is much wealthier than the average European. 76% of Americans do not live paycheck to paycheck. That is a self reported stat and not reliable. It's a media sensationalist headline grabber which virtually every economist ignores.

People don't like saying America is rich because it defies their beliefs, but the actual stats don't lie. Every American I know that has moved to Europe (and I have lived there as well, in Munich) moved there with, shock...American money and savings. So they don't actually get the initial start many Europeans do and it clouds their view to think that's just how all Europeans live.

That doesn't guarantee that this will always be true, but given Europe's current trajectory, even with the US's many shortcomings...it's hard to say Europe will catch up anytime soon.

> 76% of Americans do not live paycheck to paycheck. That is a self reported stat and not reliable.

Do you have any sources for this? The reason why I personally don't believe your claim is because every single US citizen I know lives paycheck-to-paycheck, quite literally

Per the Federal Reserve, the average 35 to 44 year old has over $141,000 in retirement savings. That’s just incompatible with the idea that everyone is living paycheck to paycheck in the full sense of the phrase. Every dollar is not being spent: plenty is being saved for retirement, spent on unnecessary things, etc.

Are most of these people allocating every dollar that comes in each month to bills, living expenses, and savings? Sure, but that doesn’t mean they have no money left in the paycheck.

One quick correction, it's not a self reported stat, it's a stat from a viral tiktok that comes from maybe a 2013 survey on a personal finance site.

> 2013 survey on a personal finance site

E.g, self-reported but with TikTok noise added.

All of this stuff tries to be factual and scientific about something that is a feeling, really - if you're $80k in debt (not that I know ANYONE like that no, sirreeeeee!) and have no plan and don't even know how much you owe each month, you're going to be stressed and pissed and always surprised.

If you're in the exact same situation but have it all documented and budgeted and planned for (what I call "knowing exactly how fucked you are") you'll be much better off mentally even if not financially (at first, that will follow).

So it has selection bias in addition to the bias from self reporting. Got it. Your stats professor is crying somewhere.

Then why are Euros happier overall?

Fun fact, that's also untrue or at least dubious.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/may/16/facebook-p...

"Data from 2020 through 2022 found that between 50% and 63% of Americans report living paycheck to paycheck."

(Well, that's a relief.)

One bullet point down: "But there is no clear definition for the phrase "paycheck to paycheck," so people should be skeptical of statistics based on the concept, one economist said."

> Around 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

A lot of people are "see money spend money". Regardless of their paycheck amount, they find ways to spend it all. This does not mean they are poor.

Pro football players, for example, are famous for quickly spending their $millions into bankruptcy.

You are responding to data about the median American.

income data about the median american.

income data alone does not tell a very complete story.

Income is by far the dominant term, you're being ridiculous.

No I'm not. I'm responding to data about median income adjusted for PPP, and not adjusted for social services such as healthcare. Big difference.

Most people in America don't live paycheck to paycheck or rack up massive debt because they're poor. They do it because they're financially illiterate, over-consume, or both. A few watch-through's of Caleb Hammer's financial audit show will disabuse you of this belief.