Tag: excuses

Whenever one of these stories comes out about how little savings the average family has, they always seem to concentrate on wealth inequality, stagnant wages, and rising costs. They rarely concentrate on personal responsibility, failure to grasp the concept of delayed gratification, lack of basic budgeting skills, and playing the blame game for your failures. I love how these articles describe a $1,000 “emergency” expense that is unexpected.

Only delusional, math challenged, live for today morons would consider having to get 4 new tires for your car as an unexpected emergency. It’s not an unexpected emergency when your 15 to 20 year old water heater gives out. Appliances crap out at 10 years or less. Roofs start leaking around 20 years. You and your family members get sick every year. None of this is an unexpected emergency.

It’s not an emergency when after 18 years your child enters college. You had 18 years to save. You cannot work for 40 years and be surprised by retirement. It’s a national disgrace there are so many households with so little. The excuses and rationalizations by the ignorant masses are a plenty. I understand the ravages of inflation and wages not keeping up, but that is no excuse for living above your means because your neighbor does so.

If you make $50,000, spend less than $50,000 and save the difference. If you make $50,000, you shouldn’t be living in a $250,000 home, driving a leased $40,000 vehicle, spending $400 per month on cable and smart phones, eating out three times per week, and taking exotic vacations every year.

The only way to accumulate savings is to live beneath your means. It’s that simple. Too bad most Americans have been brainwashed by the banker/media/corporate propaganda and have been running on a hamster wheel their entire lives. If you are 50 years old with $100,000 of household income and can’t handle an “expected” $1,000 expense, it’s no one’s fault but your own.

Via AP

NEW YORK (AP) — Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years of recovery from the Great Recession, Americans’ financial conditions remain precarious as ever.

These financial difficulties span all income levels, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Seventy-five percent of people in households making less than $50,000 a year would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill. But when income rose to between $50,000 and $100,000, the difficulty decreased only modestly to 67 percent.

Even for the country’s wealthiest 20 percent — households making more than $100,000 a year — 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000.

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