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62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, as holiday spending, credit card debt rise (www.cnbc.com)
submitted 10 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
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[-] _number8_@lemmy.world 55 points 10 months ago

damn i wonder why, ads are being driven into your brain at every second, buying things is designed to feel good, now it costs more and jobs are even more precarious

i wish we could stop shaming people for having debt. if you see people like, with receipts and a teller's hat in a film the tone is practically like they're alcoholics. ridiculous. everyone lives above their means sometimes -- a loud minority love to smugly brag about how careful and controlled and perfect they are. simply follow this budget. simply install this app. simply deny yourself any pleasures for 50 years and get hit by a bus the day before retirement. that easy. christ.

[-] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 29 points 10 months ago

As the father of two kids, I can’t imagine how much money I saved by not exposing my kids to ads at a young age.

[-] OpenStars@kbin.social 17 points 10 months ago

However, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

Normalizing (the opposite of shaming) people living in debt all the time is not necessarily a good thing either. Whether you actually end up able to retire or not, it is a good practice to live within your means. It's like all Zen and shit - seriously, it lowers stress, saves marriages, and eats babies, or like two of those three I can't quite recall which...

It doesn't have to be all prim & proper - things like just eating at home more than eating out, or the REALLY big one living in a cheaper place, can make such a difference.

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago

Hating the system is okay tho. Like with a lactose intolerance, some people just struggle to make sound financial decisions and are vulnerable to get indebted for life, and it gets abused. Some people are born into poverty, and they can't meet these standards of life we have without another loan, and it gets abused. Finance is all about abuse. We can put another joke at expense of the person who are, like a gambling addict, put it onto themselves for having an expensive thing they don't even need, but in the end we know that there are long-living businesses that survive by inventing new kinds of how to abuse and gaslight a person into thinking it's nothing. It's like shaming someone for drug abuse being in a crack neighborhood. Personal agency is under the question, when it's constantly challenged by showering ads and unrealistic lifestyle models.

It's better to propose celebrating one's financial freedom and independence, starting to value it on it's own, knowing you'd lose it in an exchange. Not punching down, nor normalizing being in debt. More like treating it like a drinking binge - we can all understand if a person shows up hungover after a tragedy, we can show empathy to cheer them up, but nevertheless it progressively ruins their lives and should be taken care of for their own happiness and health. Just like alcohol denies you whole hours of your day, debt denies you wage you works hard for every day, it's just like you slave yourself off here for nothing, like there's a hole in your pocket that Mr Piggy knows how to reach, like you work not for yourself but for them and their wealth.

It should be normal to be vocal about how it's fucking great you can move places, change things without that anchor staying in your back and dragging you down. Be proud to be free. And having a party over finally paying them down.

It's like no one felt fancy having their first-ever paycheck. All these opportunities you can have for some dead presidents, mmm. Having them all for yourself once more, even minus bills, should feel like a second birthday.

[-] OpenStars@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago

Another big one is obesity - most people in the Western world are affected by it, and therefore we all are indirectly; and even skinny people can be full of saturated fats at the biochemical level. And yet we are pumped full of ads for it 24/7. You can stop watching TV or reading things where those show up... but nevertheless it surroundeds you still.

Some people fall prey to all of the things - alcoholism, obesity, overspending, and more besides - while some may be immune to some of them, but nobody among us is perfectly capable of avoiding all of them. So as you said, perfection isn't a goal that we can reach so much as something to strive for, but it is so very much worth striving for!

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

I agree with you, and it's damning that dietary disorders are so overlooked, including anorexia I have myself ): Another part of the medal, still shitty.

I find that schools should be a place to somehow form that first layer of defence against these patterns, and they aren't that good at that currently, nor many of them have a proper psychological counseling or even understanding how kids work. If all these shitty marketing practices would take to time to being shut off, let's at least patch the youth to ignore them.

Bolsheviks, with all their failings, did exactly that by starting with literacy campaigns and providing their thoughts as a learning material to deprogram people from tsarism (and program them into bolshevism, yes), and it worked. The fight we'd have in eleven years already started with children entering their first grade. There's no such angle, imho, to combat these problems, but making them immune here from the very start.

The same with climate change and political populism: a decade-long investment to really affect things in the future with much smaller efforts than reprogramming an adult who already formed their habits. By educating them and kicking off grifters at that level, we'd ensure they are much safer than us, that they don't need to learn it on their own.

If there's a slight chance you can do so with small things like voting, talking about how it's important, arguing with other parents at regular school meetings, do it. I do it too.

[-] OpenStars@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago

I am not sure how democracy can survive, globally. It takes so very much effort, but people are so extremely lazy, yet those two factors seem like they work against one another? Many parents just want to use schools as daycare centers, and I've even heard of some schools having to potty train the youngest ones, who somehow never did learn that at home.

While at the same time, globalization and mechanization make schooling irrelevant for so many, who will earn less in service jobs that don't need it, but still are told to vote, as if they are capable of properly understanding political discourse, and especially how to spot misinformation. Places like Russia heavily push misinformation, and many of the dumbest Western societies seem to lack any defense against it, by people who kinda don't even care which message they send so long as it lines their personal pocketbooks.

In this time period we live in where technology is at a higher level than it's ever been, so very many people fall through the cracks and cannot access the most basic tenants of previous eras - like the ability to work hard and thus buy a home, or at least be able to afford rent so as to avoid becoming homeless.

In the face of all that, schooling seems to be not a priority for people just trying to hold on for dear life through these economic upsets. It's like in chess, in order to perform a really cool end-game move, you have to survive the next few rounds first, and then the next several after that, and so on. So even if schooling would have been "the solution to all (many) of our problems", it nevertheless may get ignored, especially as several Western nations go through major constitutional crises in the next decade.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 31 points 10 months ago

Predatory lending is one of those things at least one party should be against...

But lots of those corporations donate to both parties these days, so it won't happen until people start treating primaries as the important part of our electoral system.

It's not enough to just show up in the general and settle for anyone that doesn't have your favorite letter next to their name. That's better than nothing, but it's just not enough these days. Democracy isn't easy, if it is, it likely means it's not working

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Predatory lending is part and parcel to price gouging.

How the hell else are Americans covering the gaps in their income to cover for massively increased costs from "inflation" (cough price gouging cough)? They're turning to easily accessible credit, even if the terms are bad. Why? Because the average American has a sixth grade reading level and isn't competent enough in math to understand high interest rates and how debt can compound over time.

I'm in literal poverty with terrible credit score and I get credit offers all the fucking time. They always have terrible rates.

I don't think consumers actually can bear the increase in costs, and that the business groups and credit companies know that and are all banking on that being the case, so their profits can keep increasing and they can keep steadily squeezing the working class.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago

I mean, what are people gonna do?

Starve or put $1k on a credit that will take 5k to eventually pay off?

A cynic would say the main reason Biden only did $600 in COVID relief is lots of the parties donors invest heavily in debt. It's hard to beat 20% interest when you're the one collecting it. There's no greater investment opportunities, but the game is over if everyone has enough to live off of.

Even just them paying some of it down early drastically reduces their profits long term. If every American just geot another 1k and paid down credit cards, it could be billions of lost interest.

The article says there's almost a trillion of it by now. It's an absolutely mind boggling amount of money we're talking about. Throwing a couple million to both parties is comparitively nothing to what they're making.

[-] chitak166@lemmy.world 27 points 10 months ago

The older I get, the more I realize holidays are scams.

Don't fall prey.

[-] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 10 months ago

Every Christmas season that comes and goes, I'm further reminded that if none of the commercials we see existed, if Amazon wasn't constantly shoving cheap Chinese bullshit down your throat, and if people actually thought about the things that brought them joy in life, we wouldn't have 25% of the commercialist bullshit that comes along with what originally was a religious holiday.

Bake some Christmas treats and call your grandma. That's the real Christmas shit.

[-] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 17 points 10 months ago

It should be illegal to charge compound interest, and the highest a person should ever have to pay is 10% of the total borrowed. So $100 is $110 back, max.

[-] WhiteHawk@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Then what's to stop people from borrowing money and waiting until the amount they have to pay back is less than what they borrowed due to inflation?

[-] chitak166@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

What's to stop people from borrowing money and waiting until they die?

[-] RealEarthHuman@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Forfeitures. Credit ratings.

[-] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 0 points 10 months ago

I guess nothing. Make things cheaper.

[-] WhiteHawk@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

It's a bit more complicated than that, I'm afraid

[-] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Greedy Billionaires aren’t complicated.

[-] WhiteHawk@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

No, but economics are.

[-] tsonfeir@lemm.ee -1 points 10 months ago

They’re complicated by manipulation. I wonder who is doing the manipulating?

Kill the billionaires.

[-] Art3sian@lemmy.world -5 points 10 months ago

I hate this argument.

What happened to being an adult and not signing your name to stupid shit you can’t afford?

[-] HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 12 points 10 months ago

Predatory business practices.

[-] Art3sian@lemmy.world -3 points 10 months ago

Compound interest has been a thing since the Babylonians, 2,000BC, and they understood it from clay tablets.

If you don’t understand it 4,023 years later with a iPhone in your pocket, you’re an idiot.

[-] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

I mean, you're not wrong, but I think their point was it's morally wrong, not confusing.

[-] mriormro@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Usury was also a thing back then.

[-] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Since the 1950s, America has demonstrably engaged in dumbing down its population. You're right, personal accountability is king, but that's assuming you're dealing with a populace that has critical thinking skills and not addicted to bullshit consumerism delivered by dogmatic "Free-est country on Earth" propaganda.

[-] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago

Predatory capitalism happened. And a system of society that doesn't afford everyone an equal opportunity to take advantage of such a system.

[-] gdog05@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

I watch some YouTube videos about the terrible state of the car market (just for curiosity I guess). One of the channels is a guy who buys auction vehicles. He was saying today that one of the smaller title loan places in Vegas is opening fifteen new branches and I want to say double that amount in Phoenix.

We're in for an ugly time ahead.

[-] PatFussy@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago

$V calls LETS GOOOOOOO

[-] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago

How do they define paycheck to paycheck? I believe people are struggling, but I want to make sure I have the numbers right when the wonks get all mathlete with statistics.

[-] TenderfootGungi@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Exactly. You could be maxing Roth and ira, drive new cars, pay on a million dollar house, and live paycheck to paycheck.

[-] mriormro@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Paycheck to paycheck usually denotes all of your paycheck goes strictly towards critical expenses (food, housing, bills).

This is how they're defining it in their study: https://www.pymnts.com/consumer-finance/2022/what-is-paycheck-to-paycheck/

[-] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

It also has a logical flaw built right in: debt. If peoples' debt is increasing ... are they even succeeding in living paycheck to paycheck?? That sounds more like a plane in the process of crashing, and no one will call it a crash for the simple fact they haven't hit ground, yet...

this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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