When faced with an unexpected $1,000 expense, more than one-third of Americans would borrow the money, according to a new Bankrate survey. That may include tapping their credit cards, seeking money from friends or family or taking out a personal loan.
Most would not turn to cash savings because they don’t have it, the personal finance website found.
Fewer than half of Americans, 44%, say they can afford to pay a $1,000 emergency expense from their savings, according to Bankrate’s survey of more than 1,000 respondents conducted in December.
That is up from 43% in 2023, yet level when compared to 2022.
“We’re just not wired to save,” said Brad Klontz, a certified financial planner and expert in financial psychology and behavioral finance. Our brains are instead programmed to focus on our immediate needs.
“We’re just not wired to save,” said Brad Klontz, a certified financial planner and expert in financial psychology and behavioral finance. Our brains are instead programmed to focus on our immediate needs.
Hahaha, this guy can legit go fuck himself. We’re in a fucking Gilded Age where we’re being fucking bled dry by fucking corporations ripping us off, nickel and dime-ing us to death, and just fucking over customers as much as they can to make a buck.
But nooooo, it couldn’t be that half the country isn’t paid a fucking living wage!
You couldn’t get by in the cheapest places in the country.
Right now Lubbock, Texas has rents roughly $900 a month for a one bedroom apartment (Lubbock is cited in many studies as one of the cheapest rental markets in the US).
Minimum wage is $7.25 in Texas.
To afford a $900 apartment on your own, you would need to be making $16.87 an hour.
The average wage in Lubbock is $26,413/year, or about $13.75, which is about three dollars short of a renter allowing you to rent that place (income per month x 3 is the standard).
So, even in the cheapest places to rent in the country nobody can actually afford to live alone.
But sure Klontz, you fucking clod, it’s that “wE’rE jUsT nOt wIrEd tO sAvE!” What a fucking crock of shit. Can someone who knows this person in real life maybe try slapping the fucking stupid out of his idiot face?
EDIT: Shit like this why idiotic people like Trump voters don’t trust “experts.” If he’s an expert I’m Mickey Fucking Mouse and Disney can just try suing me for existing.
We were also wired not to be born rich with a silver spoon up our asses. We’re wired for higher education to cost 180% higher than it was 20 years ago. We’re wired that our healthcare expenses can cause bankruptcy if we develop a serious illness that requires surgery. We’re wired that car insurance went up 20% in one year. We’re wired that grocery costs went up 35% in one year, in some states. We’re wired that all these gigantic cost increases happen, but our compensation only goes up 2.5-3% depending on employer…or we’re laid off entirely.
Everything you just said was extremely well put, and this guy needs to be TOLD to fuck off.
I have pretty decent savings, but I also live in a country with public health care. With some health incidents in the last few years that required the ER, I suspect that in the US I’d be broke.
Both things can be true. I think there is something to the remark that people aren’t wired to save. I don’t feel like I can afford to buy frivolous things at every store I go into and I make decent money. On the other hand, I know someone making FAR less than me who literally does buy junk every chance they get.
I do feel like I am the outlier, I’ve been saving money since I was a child and everyone else around me tended to blow any lump sum of money as soon as they got it. Whereas I would spend 0-10% and put the rest in savings.
The rich not only control the media, but vast swaths of our academics as well. Especially so-called economists and “business experts”, like the bootlicker quoted here.
These people know nothing about neurology or psychology. They’re being paid to repeat bullshit so people get complacent (and worse, use their ‘expertise’ to influence lawmaking).
but vast swaths of our academics as well
They literally drive what academia cares about. They’re the reason there’s been so much push to drop all arts and humanities, because FUCK CRITICAL THINKING AMIRITE?
Precisely. Our education system is deeply mired in the muck of privatized funding of public education. Hopefully we can root this shit out and enforce some regulations soon.
Honestly just restricting private donations and forcing them to fucking pay taxes like the rest of us would fix a large part of this.
i would save if i actually had something to save; and i suspect many are in the same boat.
Wow, it’s like encouraging people to live on credit and debt is actually bad for people!
I seriously hate how much the US fucks over people who can’t make enough to even consider saving money; overdraft fees from banks, having to get loans and debt in order to pay for big expenses, punishing people who need to use credit by lowering their credit score… list goes on and on.
as the saying goes, it’s expensive to be poor.
Lmfao WHAT savings I was almost homeless this year working full time for CVS
We’re wired to save, if we make enough money to be able to save.
Most people I know do save, put quite a bit of effort in it too.
And then when they’ve saved up some money, one of these unexpected expenses happens that resets them to zero.
And these unexpected expenses keep happening at a shorter interval, causing people that do save to also not have enough buffer to pay for a $1000 unexpected expense AGAIN.
I also know quite a few people that saved a lot over the years, to then see it go up in smoke when COVID hit and life became 50% more expensive in the span of 3 years.
It’s rather revolting how transparent these narcissistic projections have become.
It’s never their (the people defining the rules of the economy, like this expert) fault, it’s always the victims (all of us).
According to his job description, the dude is a “Mental Wealth Advisor” 🙄
“Mental Wealth Advisor” Loosely Translated: Scum Sucking Piece of Shit
Controversial thought maybe, but I indeed have many friends who should and could afford to save, and choose not to.
None of these friends are wealthy or have high salary’s, they’re just bad with money
Yeah, I’m curious as to what percentage of that group simply can’t afford to save, and the percentage that simply choose to spend instead. Like you, I know people who certainly could be saving money, but instead have new phones all the time and also are driving leased luxury cars.
“we’re not wired to save” is a weird way of saying
44%56% of Americans barely make it paycheck to paycheck with no disposable income.Edit: wrong percentage
Yeah something like 25% of Americans make under $35k. That’s poverty wages in this economy.
“Not wired to save” … Mother fucker is completely out of touch with systemic pressures squeezing every last ounce out of people.
Friends of ours busted their asses to raise kids and simultaneously go to college for accounting. The other parent rose up to management in a factory.
They still can’t afford a basic house and are endlessly caught in a loop as renters where they get fucked even more.
My wife and I were lucky in the timing of getting our home and lucky to just know a realtor in our family. Luck, luck, luck. I’m not working half as hard as they are if I’m honest and they are getting fucked by a system that doesn’t give a shit about them, all the while the rich get richer then turn around and tell all the plebs to blame the poor immigrants seeking a better life.
You gotta make 100-150k to live comfortably (not luxuriously) in most major cities… Has not much to do with not being “wired to save”, agreed
But why have children if you can’t or struggle to afford them? Save for longer…then have kids.
Even if they didn’t, it would make little difference.
But (and I don’t know in their case) unplanned kids or not aside, now you’re saying they should wait for this magical time where they might be able to afford owning a home (when in reality they probably did at the time feel they could when prices were lower), versus the fact that you can’t just magically have kids whenever. The older you get, the more risks and complications versus the challenge of simply raising kids when you’re older in general.
The point is there was a time when this sort of calculated planning wasn’t necessary; yet the squeeze from the rich now makes it so we have to literally postpone fucking life because of how rigged the real estate market and the broader wealth gap is.
The point is there are only dilemmas and no good options while societal pressures continue to increase for the poor and middle-class. Besides that, there’s a lot of tolerance and room for forgiveness when you’re rich. Not so much when you’re poor. Make one mistake and you’re fucked. And no, this is not a meritocracy.
I think it is more like people don’t have high paying jobs with extra money to save.
The media has been blaming poor people for not having money for forty fucking years or more.
"Over the last 40 years, sadly, I think there’s been an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top, or to be mad at folks at the bottom, Obama said. “And I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction.”
To illustrate his point, the president brought up Fox News.
“If you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu,” Obama said. "They will find folks who make me mad. I don’t know where they find them. They’re like, ‘I don’t want to work. I just want a free Obama phone’ or whatever. And that becomes an entire narrative, right? That gets worked up. And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical, who’s raising a couple of kids and is doing everything right but still can’t pay the bills."
Yep, and this is from when he was president. Fox News is propaganda.
Excellent pull-quote except for this part: “I think there’s been an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top”
No, Obama. No. We don’t have power to do that. FOX News isn’t trying to make folks mad at people at the top. They’re only trying to do that to you, Obama, because you’re black. They’re propping up every rich fucking piece of shit they can, otherwise!
I believe he was saying other news networks were trying to make people mad at the top. But Fox News is casting poor people as bad and lazy when they are not.
other news networks were trying to make people mad at the top
Yeah, none of them actually do that. People are angry at the top because we constantly see them getting away with shit in the media. Like Trump, for example. I’m fucking pissed at him and the entire Republican establishment, because they’re criminal fascists who tried to do a fucking coup, and I’m pissed at the Democrats for fucking glad-handing and footsying around with fucking fascists instead of treating it like the serious fucking problem it is. I’m pissed at AG Garland waiting until it was clear that Trump wasn’t going to give back classified documents after two years to finally file charges. Anyone else would have been in chains almost immediately, and we literally had an air force kid that happened to recently as an example. I’m pissed at Obama for not putting an AG that would go after Bushes war crimes. No, we have a lot of glad-handing and letting people off at the top and that’s where that sentiment fucking comes from Obama you “we need to look forward not backward” piece of shit. His lack of will in prosecuting war crimes is part and parcel to why they’re so hesitant to prosecute Trump. It’s all a fucking joke.
That is why people are angry at the top, not because any fucking media told us to. FUCK! Because it’s painfully obvious there’s two justice systems, one for the rich and politically connected and one for everyone else!
If people are hungry then let them eat cake!
Been going on for a lot longer than fourty years.
“We’re just not wired to save,” said Brad Klontz
Asshole. Like THAT’s the problem.
Yeah that jumped out at me too. What a privileged bunch of crap to spew.
Our brains are instead programmed to focus on our immediate needs.
Yes, we are “programmed” to buy things that we need to live, like food, shelter, and medicine. I’m pretty sure most people would save if they fucking could. You’d think that “a certified financial planner and expert in financial psychology and behavioral finance” could come up with something a bit better than another avocado-toast-like victim blaming.
I’m just going assume they wanted to say “not wired enough money to save” but forgot the middle part
Can you expand?
