Over half of Americans say they're not even close to financial freedom ( scrippsnews.com )

Shikadi , 10 months ago

Not too long ago the number was around 50% and not having $500 in the bank, so at least this is technically an improvement

Anticorp , 10 months ago

That was actually a study that was completely misrepresented by the media. What the people actually said in the study is that if they were presented with an unexpected expense of $500, they would charge it, not that they didn’t have the money. But then unscrupulous mukrakers took that study and reported it as “50% of Americans say they don’t have enough cash to cover an unexpected $500 expense!”. There are plenty of valid reasons to charge an unexpected expense, regardless of how much money you have in the bank.

Shikadi , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Oh wow that’s wild

Edit: No, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’m seeing multiple sources (go banking, bankrate, Princeton) all corroborating the lack of savings. It looks like bankrate does the surveys annually too: www.bankrate.com/…/emergency-savings-report

Bankrate doesn’t ask the savings number directly so that’s maybe what you were seeing, but go banking does:

gobankingrates.com/…/nearly-half-of-americans-hav…

“Methodology: GOBankingRates surveyed 1,002 Americans aged 18 and older from across the country on between January 30 and February 1, 2023, asking six different questions: (1) How much savings do you have?; …”