AMERICANS NOT PREPARED FOR EMERGENCY EXPENSES
Suppose you just got into a car wreck – and it was your fault. Or your home needs an emergency repair. Or one of your kids ran up a debt you didn’t know about.
Bottom line, you need to come up with $400 – immediately.
What do you do? Well, according to data from a recent survey of 4,134 American adults conducted for the Federal Reserve, the phrase “beg, borrow or steal” comes to mind. Only forty-eight percent of those surveyed said they would be able to cover an emergency $400 expense without having to borrow or sell something.
Yikes …
The data also revealed that only 21.4 percent of Americans were “very likely” to be able to pay for an emergency medical expense.
Savings have also evaporated, with 57 percent of those who had money in savings prior to the recession saying they had to spend some or all of that money to pay bills. In fact a whopping 43.2 percent exhausted “all” or “nearly all” of their pre-recession savings since 2008.
Unreal …
Let’s give it up for that “rising, thriving middle class” huh?
Anyway … according to the data, 34 percent of Americans believe they are “somewhat worse off or much worse off” than they were in 2008, compared to 34 percent who say they are “about the same” and 30 percent who say they are somewhat or much better off.
22 comments
If coming up with $400 would be that big a deal for 48% of our citizens we’re in a lot worse shape than even my cynical mind would have postulated.
Will can you lose the freaking metrosexual hyperlink colors – dark blue is readily identifiable and much easier to read than “mango citrus” or “baby puke green” or whatever the hell color you’ve used here.
DITTO — on the colors!
GOP Solution: Cut taxes on highest incomes and reduce food stamps to poor children. Maintain tax credits to billion dollar market cap businesses. These steps will create a trickle down economic phenomenon that will eventually bring prosperity to the middle class.
Yes,you summed up Fits “solution” in a nutshell.
DEM Solution: Create more government programs to help the poor. Raise taxes on those companies left stateside employing people to help pay for said programs and print up money to cover the balance. These steps will create a economic renaissance that will eventually bring prosperity to the middle class.
The sad thing is – how many people who don’t have $400 saved for an emergency just ordered pizza to be delivered to their house last night? How many of them drive a gas-guzzling vehicle because they have to drive a big truck/SUV? (I use these examples because these are my girlfriend’s neighbors). I am always amazed with dumbasses who don’t save a dime for their future and have to spend every dollar they make at work before their next paycheck. Then they go to the emergency room and bitch because they have to pay $10 a month toward a bill that they can never pay off.
Americans are fat, stupid, shortsighted and lazy. And I doubt it will get any better.
Bingo!
That’s also a good argument on why there should be no “welfare”. They roll in $40K SUV’s with rented 24″ rims and the latest high tops on the backs of those who work every day. Sadly, you could make the “stupid, shortsighted” ones are the workers getting milked like tax cattle by the benevolent government.
Don’t forget the new iPhone with the unlimited data plan…
You judge others, and hold your own corruption up as virtue. YOU have the RIGHT to Take whatever you want based on your Hateful and punitive political ideology. You determine if children go w/o enough food or decent clothes.
Your ignorance is ASTOUNDING…
Hitler and Stalin are standing amid the flames, and Screaming approval for you, Obama, Pelosi and Reid.
You act like he’s withholding your Medicaid check.
FREAK – pretty sure the whole crowd is sick of your crazy ass. Maybe some of your supporters will speak up in your defense.
Most people on this site HATE Conservatives.
I know a republican that is a conservative.
Maybe the Rich Hitler types will create some jobs like Reagan said !
1) Purchase home you can’t afford. Be sure to lie about your income and anything else you can get away with.
2) Purchase a car you can’t afford. Make sure it burns gas like a Texas wildfire burns trees.
3) Buy everything you want (not need) by maxing out credit cards. Keep opening credit cards until you exhaust every possible avenue. Get crappy ones with stupid points gimmicks you won’t use so the interest rate is jacked up even higher.
4) Go out to eat every day, breakfast lunch and dinner.
5) Purchase massively expensive cable TV package, watch only 5 channels available in the cheapest packages.
6) Buy bleeding edge smartphone, replace every year. Purchase most expensive non-unlimited plan, watch movies on 4G, pay for overages monthly.
7) Don’t purchase health insurance, hit up the ER every time you get a case of the sniffles.
8) Take out $100k+ student loans for shitty unaccredited for-profit school, drop out before graduating, don’t make payments.
9) Don’t invest, don’t save. That’s for suckers. All disposable income (and as much non-disposable income as possible) should be spent on scratch off lotto tickets or feeding a slot machine in Atlantic City. This is critical because, after all, you’ll hit the jackpot eventually, right?
10) Don’t make payments on anything until they terminate the services. Use payday advance and title loans to pay off exorbitant late fees and overdue balances to reactivate services. If there’s nothing they can cut off, let it go to collections. Make sure you hide your car out of sight so it doesn’t get repossessed.
It’s the American DRRRREEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAMMMMMM!!!
You left off getting a new $75 tattoo on the first of every month. I took a rent app last week (gotta take the app so as not to get sued by you know who) from a 25 year old girl with 3 kids and no deposit money. She was still healing up on both ankles. The arms were “full up”.
I have the constitution tattooed on my penis.
Only as far as “We the People of…”
In 10 point font…
I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve still got room on mine for the Declaration of Independence.,
You know the old saw about people who brag about their dick size, right? Excuse me while I whip this out…
http://youtu.be/5PmnKOkt7fI
I thought I was being reserved.
Show your patriotism – buy a Hummer from the idiots that bought them during the Iraq war.