[WalterBright]

> because you'll miss your mortgage or education payments and loose your health care.

This is why the sensible thing to do is to save up a cushion of 6 months. You can continue with your employer health care with COBRA for 6 months or a year.

[michaelgrafl]

You‘re saying this as if it were realistic for the majority of people to save up a cushion of 6 months in a reasonable time frame (or ever).

[WalterBright]

A majority of people are significantly above the poverty line. If they're living hand-to-mouth, they are mismanaging their finances.

For example, I know a fellow who told me he could not handle the slightest disruption in his paycheck. He was driving a new car, living in new house, wore expensive clothes, and was starting a family.

A friend of mine living in an apartment told me he was unable to pay his bills. I asked him what the payment was on his new car. I suggested he sell the car, and buy a car he could pay cash for. He surprised me by following my advice and was able to reduce his stress about his finances.

My father, an officer in the AF, was once tasked with counseling the privates on their finances, as many were unable to pay their bills on the local economy. (The AF really tries to be a good citizen in the community where the base is located.)

The privates were paid every two weeks. Half of them drank their paycheck away and ate steak for the first week, and begged/borrowed/stiffed others for money the second. They received the same paychecks, but half could not manage their finances. My father would counsel them, work up budgets for them, all for naught.

[WalterBright]

A lot of people overspend their income because they're eating out. Restaurants are an extremely expensive way to get fed. Even a quarter pounder at McD's is $6, but I can get a half pound of good steak from the supermarket for $2. My drip coffee costs me $.03 per cup, compared to $4 at Starbucks. You can fry yourself 3 eggs for $.50.

[kamaal]

Not sure where I read this, but there was some article about the top skills you can learn that can help you save up money. Cooking was the top skill.

Apart from the upfront restaurant bills, also you can save money health wise on the longer run.

[hnick]

I'd personally file it under the entertainment budget too. It's fun!

[magduf]

Part of the problem here is that restaurants in America are extremely expensive. It's cheaper to eat out in other industrialized nations in my experience. Worse, they try to hide the prices from you by not including tax in the advertised price, and also expecting a "tip" for the service because they don't pay their servers.

[serf]

> A majority of people are significantly above the poverty line. If they're living hand-to-mouth, they are mismanaging their finances.

Or, another scenario, the 'poverty line' is arbitrary and hardly an indicator of universal financial power.

In other words : the poverty salary 'line' tells you nothing of burden, it's just a magic number. If an individual has multiple unknown burdens, their 'poverty line' is at a much different , unknown, level.

I live in California, mostly. I know of families that live (far) below the 'Poverty Line', but because they send everything they can back to their home country for the rest of their family to live on.

Suddenly an individual at the poverty line is supporting 3-7 people in another country; and has no real legal way to justify or exemplify the practice in any legal financial way that would signify their increased burden - they become essentially a lost statistic and generally lie on their taxes due to fear of losing the arrangement.

Individuals that lead this style of life tend to go back home periodically simply because the burden of living in the US with a sub-poverty income isn't realistic.

tl;dr : The poverty income line alone means next to nothing in personal context. Don't assume that you can dwindle every persons' life down to fitting within it, that's not realistic. Saving money is absolutely important, I agree, but let's not just assume that that kind of financial flexibility exists for every individual. It'd be nice, but it's fantasy.

[WalterBright]

> exists for every individual

I said "a majority of people". Not every individual.

[kelnos]

It's not easy, but I think a lot of the people who don't save, actually could. Part of the problem is people don't think they can save "enough to matter", so they never start. Even starting with just tossing $5 or $10 a month into savings account can help. It kickstarts the habit, at least, and often people can later justify raising that amount or putting in a little more here and there.

For some other people, if they'd drop the "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality even just a little bit, they could develop significant savings.

Yes, there are many people in the US who are just barely getting by, and can't meaningfully save without making cuts to essential spending, but that certainly doesn't describe everyone who currently lives paycheck-to-paycheck.

[lr4444lr]

If they can't, then they shouldn't be homeowners. It's not a choice for everyone. Home ownership is a liability.

Signed, a homeowner who sees a lot of his less well off neighbors making much more extrvagant purchases than he does.

Braces for downvoting

[denkmoon]

But the <your-nation-here> dream!

[AtlasBarfed]

If you're a republican, people can't do this because of their failings and choices.

If you're a democrat, it's because the economic deck is stacked against people.

I thought that a very large majority of credit card debt was healthcare costs and other structural life costs, so that is score one for the democrat view, although we are a very unhealthy population (so back to the republican view a bit)

Then again, the real estate bubble showed that people were getting way too much house (republican view)... of course enabled by almost no oversight of the lending and financials underling it (democrat view).

[bjourne]

Poverty and unhealthy eating goes hand in hand. If you work for more than 8 hours a day and/or with long commutes, how on earth will you have time to cook? The US has a huge poverty problem that is well-documented in countless studies. It has nothing to do with republicans vs democrats, it has everything to do with believing the facts!

[magduf]

The US does have a huge poverty problem, but that's not the whole story. There's tons of middle-class people living paycheck-to-paycheck because they just have to drive a BMW or have some giant house they don't need, or eat out all the time and get two glasses of wine with each dinner. Yeah, this doesn't describe the poor people getting by on minimum wage, but there's countless $50-100k people who this describes perfectly.

[bjourne]

Do you have any evidence to back up your claims? Because I think you are just regurgitating right-wing talking points. The myth of the poor person who is poor only because he or she spends way to much money on extravaganza.

[magduf]

Oh please; I see it all the time, including in my own family. "Right-wing talking points"? From what I can tell, it's frequently the Trump voters who this describes well.

Did you even read my post? I specifically noted this doesn't apply to poor people (the ones the right-wingers will claim are only poor because of bad choices), I'm addressing middle-class and up people.

[WalterBright]

> how on earth will you have time to cook?

As a non-cook myself, I can fry some eggs in 3 minutes or so, and a steak a bit longer. Sometimes I'll dump a bowl of frozen veggies into a bowl, put a pat of butter on top, microwave for a couple minutes, and it's ready to eat. A can of beans takes a couple minutes.

The idea that to eat decent food requires much prep time in the kitchen isn't true.

[bjourne]

You also have to drive to the supermarket and take care of the dirty dishes. But you are right, it's not the minutes per se, it is that if you work more than 8 hours/day, you don't have much energy for anything else.

[hugi]

I feel desperately sorry for Americans when it comes to health care.

[rchaud]

Which Americans though?

There are numerous Americans and American institutions whose work specifically involves pushing the interests of insurers, pharma and hospitals on Capitol Hill, against those of average people who work minimum wage jobs and can't afford basic coverage.

[AtlasBarfed]

Won't someone think of the executives, doctors, lawyers, and lobbyists? They have feelings too.

[lotsofpulp]

Why would you need COBRA? You can go to healthcare.gov and buy health insurance that is probably as good or better than what most employers offer. And you wouldn’t have to pay for months you didn’t need healthcare.

[amyjess]

Exchange health insurance is still pretty unaffordable if you're unemployed or underemployed, and it's much less likely than employer health insurance to cover medical conditions that aren't required by law to be covered (e.g. gender dysphoria).

Our system is messed up.

[lotsofpulp]

I purchase health insurance for my businesses, and it all seems the same to me, cost and coverage wise. I guess it might be a little cheaper if the company has a very young workforce.

[amyjess]

Large companies all custom-package their own insurance instead of just buying off-the-shelf plans.