Ok let's poll Lemmy. Upvote me if you can. Downvote me if you can't. I can so I'll keep my own upvote.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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politics
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Can’t see downvotes, assume everyone is okay. New article: 190% of people on Lemmy can afford a $1,000 emergency expense
Edit: 190% was a typo, but leaving it in there
Lemmy attracts wealthy intelligent people.
Or just broadly financially literate people. I only make $34k AUD.
I'm incredibly fortunate that my parents were able to teach me financial literacy. I'm also incredibly lucky that I have the personality type to be happy "slumming it", almost taking a sick pride in how far I can make a 50c bar of soap stretch to clean my entire body, house and laundry, so living within my means has been possible even when my means is a couch in a 4 bedroom share house with 10 roommates. (some of the best years of my life, which is far from the usual sharehouse experience)
Because of a congenial illness, my start in the work force was delayed and is still partly inhibited. But I made a point to put a bare minimum of $20 from every pay cheque straight into a term deposit that I couldn't touch. When it hit $1000, it moved into a more accessible emergency account, and began saving up the term deposit again. When things are easy I bump that savings contribution up as much as I can. The emergency fund is now a comfortable 5k, with another 10k in the term deposit, that's 15 years years of savings. The only reason it's as much as it is, is because I've been incredibly lucky to have very few genuine emergencies that require immediate payment. If I can put an unexpected expense on a payment plan, I do.
There are "emergencies" I have ignored because the cost wasn't worth it. I've had 9 teeth extracted, I probably could have saved them all if I forked out a few thousand for a root canal, but it made more financial sense to just let them get bad enough that I could get them extracted for free at the dental school, since now I will never have to worry about those teeth them (I'll only have to worry about jaw bone loss).
I'm lucky that I never had to get involved with credit card debt. I didn't have "the bank of mum and dad", but between my 60 cousins and 20 friends, I can borrow $10-20 from everyone to cover something big, and pay it back slowly interest free, and I make sure I do the same for them, it's only $20 after all. I relied on that a lot when I was young and still building my emergency fund, and that's certainly a privilege not everyone has.
I'm privileged to be financially educated and have a social safety net, but by the living standards set by my country, I'm far from wealthy.
Is the poll for americans only?
I would assume since that is what the article is about. Idk
Depends. I have enough in savings to cover the cost, sure, but there's only enough in savings because I've been transferring about 25% of my paycheck to savings for the past 2 years in order to afford a wedding/honeymoon. So I'd just be pushing myself into a larger credit debt after the bills come due for the wedding services.
Wedding/honeymoon, what a fucking waste of money you've been suffering for the past two years to throw away all that hard-earned income on a one-week transitory moment 🤦♀️
Pfft, fresh fruit and eggs for breakfast. What a waste of hard earned money for a 10 minute transitory moment.
do you transfer 25% of all your income for 2 years to a fund devoted to one 10-minute breakfast of fresh fruit & eggs?
Doesn’t matter the amount of money or the time.
The fact is that creating enjoyable memories for yourself or as a couple is important for a relationship. Having a nice vacation in general is important for mental health, especially if you’re an American who likely almost never gets to be truly away from work.
Disparaging someone for saving money for a vacation is just an elitist attitude.
You could survive off of multivitamins, rice and beans for the rest of your life if you really wanted to not waste money. Yet you’re now defensive of a mediocre breakfast. So at what point does spending money on “transitory moments” become wasteful to you.
Yea that's how the 1% wanted it to be, they got it.
"We did it boys! Maximum efficiency! We extract literally every dollar possible from the peons! They have nothing left when we're done!"
Ah, I was wondering what dystopia felt like. Now I know I'm living in one
You ain’t seen nothing yet
We live in a cross-dystopia
this is an excellent time to introduce the idea that The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does. Not what it claims to do. Not what it tries but fails to do. What it does. You can be confident that every system is operating as-designed, doubly so when the "failures" of the system benefit the designers.
We live in a society where it's advisable for everyone to carry tampons, whether female or male, just in case of a gunshot wound ☹️
A good 30% of us should be wearing ballistics vests outdoors with the current shooting rates
We’re fucked. But Lonnie can still buy a company and run it into the ground, so the system works!
What's so frustrating is watching people online ridicule the perception that we're not doing great collectively as a nation. If the bottom falls out and the 56% get wrecked financially the other 44% are going to feel it. And having anxiety about that is perfectly understandable.
The other 43% will feel it, the 1% will profit enormously when they pick up their assets for pennies on the dollar
I wonder if said money expert had the balls to explain why nobody saves money in the US. He touched on it just a little. He mentioned we are implored to spend. Not implored. Incentivized.
Every time a politician gets on TV and says we have to "stimulate the economy", what he means is he has to incentivize you to blow your paycheck the minute you get it. This is done by increasing the rate at which your money loses purchasing power. Then, when it's time for reelection, he will inevitably mention the fact that Americans can't afford a $1000 emergency expense. Wages need to go up! It's not the wage rate that makes us poor. It's the debasement rate of the currency. The debasement rate is a mechanism of wealth redistribution. Wealth is transferred using the cantillion effect from the poor to the rich.
Money printer goes brrr
Wait, don't worry! The economy is doing great. Whew. Disaster averted!
Trickle down economics to the rescue. Phew!
America didn't get rid of slavery, they changed it to wage-slavery.
Answers by survey... I'm not sure exactly how much I trust those results in either direction.