A Boring Dystopia

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Nearly 40% of Americans have less than $500 in cash savings, survey shows (www.livenowfox.com)

submitted 4 days ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world

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[–] InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 11 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I see it every day and I've been there.

It wouldn't be surprising to find out that this is skewed towards young adults and seniors.

I was the young person with next to no savings and facing a nearly impossible situation of "saving" anything. Lots of us leave home in our teens with nothing or close to it. Then it's a struggle just to get all the pieces in order, and all the while, the pieces you already managed to get in place break down, get stolen, need fixing, need replacing, and so on. That first step of just keeping your head above the water is not easy, especially without support.

And then towards the later years, peoples' health fails them. They find it harder to keep a job and harder to make the same money they did when they were younger. Healthcare is expensive, even with insurance. Husbands and wives pass away, leaving you with the financial fallout. Even if you saved, the true costs of inflation come when you go to buy food and medicine and even when you need to pay someone to fix your car -- regardless of what the official numbers are.

Granted, "cash savings" means even people who are otherwise relatively well off in terms of assets fall into this category. So, it's also not a great assumption to assume that all these people are in difficult/dire situations.

[–] tmyakal 7 points 4 days ago

Overdraft fees were a normal and expected part of my budget until I was 30.

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 1 points 3 days ago

Lots of us leave home in our teens with nothing or close to it. Then it’s a struggle just to get all the pieces in order, and all the while, the pieces you already managed to get in place break down, get stolen, need fixing, need replacing, and so on. That first step of just keeping your head above the water is not easy, especially without support

This is so much the struggle of one's 20s, you're spending so much money acquiring the stuff you need to live and replacing it as it gets stolen/broken/doesn't make it through a move. I remember when it was a big purchasing decision to buy a vacuum cleaner for my second apartment. We still have that vacuum cleaner and use it regularly, so that's a hundred dollars or more that I haven't needed to spend for years, but I had to spend that when that vacuum cost multiple months of discretionary budget, budget that could've gotten sucked up by a repair or a medical bill or replacing something else that got ruined or broken.

But this also all happens at a time when you aren't making a lot of money, so if you do it right, you hit your 30s already owning some nice stuff that you'll have for a long time and with a career making good money so suddenly your savings can start balooning pretty quickly as you spend less and make more