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The above person even if his spouse is working and they are college educated and making $150,000 combined are worth nothing probably...
they probably owe more than the sum total of any assets...
Really most of us "rent" our lifestyle...
Having a so called "good lifestyle" today merely means having the ability to "rent" some nice things in life so to speak and finance your life through debt.
Uh-huh. If it makes you feel better about your life to believe that about the rest of us, who am I to argue with you? You seem to have it all figured out.
Go to some major metropolitan suburbs and you will find folks with good incomes who are house poor. Living pay check to pay check regardless of income creates issues. Witness the number of federal employees unable to pay bills during the government shutdown after missing one pay. I know folks with six figure incomes in their sixties and negative net worth.
Absolutely true. I learned about house poor people during the 1991 recession when a neighbor had to sell all the furniture in a half million dollar home.
I know a couple now with 400k+ income with zero savings. In their 50s. Absolutely enjoying every minute, but nary a thought to the future.
I believe that this part of the story, the 30% of Americans with negative net worth, is a root cause of the inequality debate that Obama references regularly. For centuries, people have saved, and the higher income people have usually saved assiduously. Yet our financial system has now allowed a bubble to develop where medium and high income people can bump along with everything highly leveraged. One disaster happens (like the 2008 crash), and the whole world sees who has been in the water without their swimsuit.
This spendthrift phenomenon may affect the politics and policies of the US for decades. And I think we savers will be the scapegoat rather than the protagonist.
That's mostly because you practically have to put a gun to a lot of people's heads to get them to save.
I disagree. Most Americans are lousy investors. They panic every time the market drops, and are always chasing after the next Apple/Google sure thing. This means they invariably buy high and sell low. They also fall prey to salesmen, buying wholly inappropriate financial products they don't understand. So even when they do save, they are taken to the cleaners.
That table doesn't reflect reality of how people live. Cyprus has a higher median wealth than the US? Spain? I don't think so. I know our free spending consuming culture has brought us down some but many people in those countries live a poorer lifestyle than the average American.
That's mostly because you practically have to put a gun to a lot of people's heads to get them to save.
Although most people are lousy savers defined benefit’s are so lucrative that its beyond belief how much you would have to save with a defined contribution just to have a chance of having the same pay at retirement. This is why there has been such a push to get rid of defined benefits.
I actually did the calculations using my own defined benefit plan to see what a typical defined contribution would require for the same pay at retirement. Someone would need to save 19% of their GROSS yearly income AND have it return at least 8.5% in investments a year for 25 years to match what I get as a guarantee. If the market crashes in 25 years or has one bad year towards the end, the person with a defined contribution just lost it all.
So take a typical married couple (2 kids) with a median income of $51K. If they pay 15% in tax + 19%, that leaves them with only $2805 to support 4 people. And that $2,800 becomes even less if they decide to be smart put save some money monthly for the inevitable emergencies. While it’s entirely possible to live off that meager an amount, they will have to give up a lot of comforts that most of the USA views as mandatory.
That table doesn't reflect reality of how people live. Cyprus has a higher median wealth than the US? Spain? I don't think so. I know our free spending consuming culture has brought us down some but many people in those countries live a poorer lifestyle than the average American.
You are grievously mistaken and woefully misinformed about the living standards in other industrialized nations. I've visited most of the countries that precede the US on that list, and have lived in several. Average people in most of them actually do enjoy significantly better living standards than similarly situated Americans. It's only in the upper wealth echelons where the US pulls away. But that just confirms how the inequality gap has grown exponentially in this country beginning from the 1980s.
You are grievously mistaken and woefully misinformed about the living standards in other industrialized nations. I've visited most of the countries that precede the US on that list, and have lived in several. Average people in most of them actually do enjoy significantly better living standards than similarly situated Americans. It's only in the upper wealth echelons where the US pulls away. But that just confirms how the inequality gap has grown exponentially in this country beginning from the 1980s.
I agree with you. I haven't lived in any other country but a lot of people are in denial about living standards in America. Debt is eating this country up and it's a trickle down effect. Look at our education system and healthcare system, they are good economic indicators compared to other countries. Americans have this false belief that we are supposed to come to the rescue for all these other countries, but we better Start helping ourselves. There are children starving in America, how often do you see commercials for them?
I disagree. Most Americans are lousy investors. They panic every time the market drops, and are always chasing after the next Apple/Google sure thing. This means they invariably buy high and sell low. They also fall prey to salesmen, buying wholly inappropriate financial products they don't understand. So even when they do save, they are taken to the cleaners.
They are lousy investors, too. So it's really both. They don't save much and invest poorly. Not a good combination.
That table doesn't reflect reality of how people live. Cyprus has a higher median wealth than the US? Spain? I don't think so. I know our free spending consuming culture has brought us down some but many people in those countries live a poorer lifestyle than the average American.
They have more money precisely because they live a "poorer lifestyle".
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