1y ago

44% of Americans can't pay an unexpected $1,000 expense from savings. ‘We're just not wired to save,’ expert says

www.cnbc.com 44% of Americans can't pay an unexpected $1,000 expense from savings. ‘We're just not wired to save,’ expert says

Building an emergency savings fund is a difficult task for Americans. Both the economy and the way we're psychologically wired may be to blame.

When faced with an unexpected $1,000 expense, more than one-third of Americans would borrow the money, according to a new Bankrate survey. That may include tapping their credit cards, seeking money from friends or family or taking out a personal loan.

Most would not turn to cash savings because they don’t have it, the personal finance website found.

Fewer than half of Americans, 44%, say they can afford to pay a $1,000 emergency expense from their savings, according to Bankrate’s survey of more than 1,000 respondents conducted in December.

That is up from 43% in 2023, yet level when compared to 2022.

“We’re just not wired to save,” said Brad Klontz, a certified financial planner and expert in financial psychology and behavioral finance. Our brains are instead programmed to focus on our immediate needs.

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“We’re just not wired to save,” said Brad Klontz, a certified financial planner and expert in financial psychology and behavioral finance. Our brains are instead programmed to focus on our immediate needs.
Hahaha, this guy can legit go fuck himself. We're in a fucking Gilded Age where we're being fucking bled dry by fucking corporations ripping us off, nickel and dime-ing us to death, and just fucking over customers as much as they can to make a buck.
But nooooo, it couldn't be that half the country isn't paid a fucking living wage!
You couldn't get by in the cheapest places in the country.
Right now Lubbock, Texas has rents roughly $900 a month for a one bedroom apartment (Lubbock is cited in many studies as one of the cheapest rental markets in the US).
Minimum wage is $7.25 in Texas.
To afford a $900 apartment on your own, you would need to be making $16.87 an hour.
The average wage in Lubbock is $26,413/year, or about $13.75, which is about three dollars short of a renter allowing you to rent that place (income per month x 3 is the standard).
So, even in the cheapest places to rent in the country nobody can actually afford to live alone.
But sure Klontz, you fucking clod, it's that "wE'rE jUsT nOt wIrEd tO sAvE!" What a fucking crock of shit. Can someone who knows this person in real life maybe try slapping the fucking stupid out of his idiot face?
EDIT: Shit like this why idiotic people like Trump voters don't trust "experts." If he's an expert I'm Mickey Fucking Mouse and Disney can just try suing me for existing.
- We were also wired not to be born rich with a silver spoon up our asses. We're wired for higher education to cost 180% higher than it was 20 years ago. We're wired that our healthcare expenses can cause bankruptcy if we develop a serious illness that requires surgery. We're wired that car insurance went up 20% in one year. We're wired that grocery costs went up 35% in one year, in some states. We're wired that all these gigantic cost increases happen, but our compensation only goes up 2.5-3% depending on employer.......or we're laid off entirely.
  Everything you just said was extremely well put, and this guy needs to be TOLD to fuck off.
- I won’t lie, I’m lucky and make a good living but I still had to pay $17,000 just for groceries last year for a family of five. It has gotten fucking crazy!!
- EDIT: Shit like this why idiotic people like Trump voters don’t trust “experts.” If he’s an expert I’m Mickey Fucking Mouse and Disney can just try suing me for existing.
  He's an "expert" in selling his services as a financial advisor.
- I have pretty decent savings, but I also live in a country with public health care. With some health incidents in the last few years that required the ER, I suspect that in the US I'd be broke.
  
  This is true. I pay a lot for health insurance and it still cost me a lot to go to the doctor. Other countries got profit out of their health care. We can do it to. I don't mind paying taxes for healthcare.
- Both things can be true. I think there is something to the remark that people aren't wired to save. I don't feel like I can afford to buy frivolous things at every store I go into and I make decent money. On the other hand, I know someone making FAR less than me who literally does buy junk every chance they get.
  I do feel like I am the outlier, I've been saving money since I was a child and everyone else around me tended to blow any lump sum of money as soon as they got it. Whereas I would spend 0-10% and put the rest in savings.
- Land of the free with Capitalism sounds like a pretty great way to run a nation!

"we're not wired to save" is a weird way of saying ~~44%~~ 56% of Americans barely make it paycheck to paycheck with no disposable income.
Edit: wrong percentage
- It's propaganda to make you blame yourself for being essentially indentured.
- Yeah something like 25% of Americans make under $35k. That's poverty wages in this economy.
  
  You kidding? That's almost a congressman's wage in my country. I want 35K a year 😭
- 56%, the 44% is the part that can pay the $1k
  
  Whoops! Thanks!
- This is correct.
- It is a spending problem. I know people who make $500k/year who live paycheck to paycheck. I know other people who make $35k/year who have money left at the end of the month (not $1000).
  Now i will grant it is a lot easier to live on 500k than 35k, and a lot easier to save. However living paycheck to paycheck doesn't tell us anything.
  
  "live paycheck to paycheck."
  That may be generally true, but they likely have a bunch of equity in their homes, and I'll bet their retirement accounts are generous. Sure, there are some who just spend everything, but most people at that level are already "hiding" as much money as they can from taxes.
  
  You're fucking saying this nonsense on an article about how 44% of the country can't come up with $1000 in an emergency.
  By definition, if the people making $500k/year have been saving, that means they have money to pay off that emergency, even if comes from a fund they didn't intend it to.
  So nearly half the country isn't in that bag. Can we stop with this "pAyChEcK tO pAyChEcK tElLs uS nOtHiNg" bullshit. There's plenty of other data to show that more than half the country is fucking hurting. US average salary is right around $60k. That's because there's a shitload of people making $30k and a small sliver of people making $900k.
  For example, to get an average of roughly $60k between a group of people making $30k and people making $900k, you need thirty people making $30k to one person making $900k. That's our fucking economy, dude.

"Not wired to save" ... Mother fucker is completely out of touch with systemic pressures squeezing every last ounce out of people.
Friends of ours busted their asses to raise kids and simultaneously go to college for accounting. The other parent rose up to management in a factory.
They still can't afford a basic house and are endlessly caught in a loop as renters where they get fucked even more.
My wife and I were lucky in the timing of getting our home and lucky to just know a realtor in our family. Luck, luck, luck. I'm not working half as hard as they are if I'm honest and they are getting fucked by a system that doesn't give a shit about them, all the while the rich get richer then turn around and tell all the plebs to blame the poor immigrants seeking a better life.
- You gotta make 100-150k to live comfortably (not luxuriously) in most major cities... Has not much to do with not being "wired to save", agreed
- I got injured overseas and after some years got a pension. I held a job down for a while and bought a house as it fell through. Couple years later I got bumped to a conditional 100% with the va. (a LA your point, alot of luck - most people fight for years to get close to the 70% I got out the gate)
  My benefit payment (basically $45k as of this year) is more than people I know in their late 30s with college degree jobs and skilled labor jobs with years under their belts. My mortgage is under $500. (again, luck, got alot of house for the price at the time) Granted, I do live in a pretty "economically depressed" rural city, but my house I paid 75k for ~8 years ago now spitballs for 190k for reference.
- But why have children if you can't or struggle to afford them? Save for longer...then have kids.
  
  Even if they didn't, it would make little difference.
  But (and I don't know in their case) unplanned kids or not aside, now you're saying they should wait for this magical time where they might be able to afford owning a home (when in reality they probably did at the time feel they could when prices were lower), versus the fact that you can't just magically have kids whenever. The older you get, the more risks and complications versus the challenge of simply raising kids when you're older in general.
  The point is there was a time when this sort of calculated planning wasn't necessary; yet the squeeze from the rich now makes it so we have to literally postpone fucking life because of how rigged the real estate market and the broader wealth gap is.
  The point is there are only dilemmas and no good options while societal pressures continue to increase for the poor and middle-class. Besides that, there's a lot of tolerance and room for forgiveness when you're rich. Not so much when you're poor. Make one mistake and you're fucked. And no, this is not a meritocracy.

According to his job description, the dude is a "Mental Wealth Advisor" 🙄
- "Mental Wealth Advisor" Loosely Translated: Scum Sucking Piece of Shit
- Gross

Bull shit we're not wired to save. This fool talks like the rich haven't been stealing our wealth for the last 50 years and we aren't left with nothing.
But then they say we waste our money because we have a fucking phone or the internet or avocado toast which last I checked avocados are pretty fucking cheap, as is bread. Like you can function in this world without having a phone or Internet, nowadays. Even homeless people have a fucking phone. Try finding a job without the internet or a phone.
We've been robbed our whole lives, and this fuck says that's your fault.
- When I was young I planned to be so smart about retirement.
  I've yet to make enough money to even cover basic expenses all these years later.

affordable housing, healthcare, and education might help. can we get some of that?
- If I had affordable housing and education I might be able to afford healthcare. MIGHT be.
- Be careful, you may have it good now. For the next generation, they will make them pay a subscription to the police and firefighters service.

I think it is more like people don't have high paying jobs with extra money to save.
- The media has been blaming poor people for not having money for forty fucking years or more.
  
  "Over the last 40 years, sadly, I think there’s been an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top, or to be mad at folks at the bottom, Obama said. "And I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction."
  To illustrate his point, the president brought up Fox News.
  "If you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu," Obama said. "They will find folks who make me mad. I don’t know where they find them. They’re like, ‘I don’t want to work. I just want a free Obama phone’ or whatever. And that becomes an entire narrative, right? That gets worked up. And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical, who’s raising a couple of kids and is doing everything right but still can’t pay the bills."
  Yep, and this is from when he was president. Fox News is propaganda.
  
  Tbf it's rich people who've been saying that, with media parroting them ... but I get what you mean.
  
  If people are hungry then let them eat cake!
  Been going on for a lot longer than fourty years.

Lmfao WHAT savings I was almost homeless this year working full time for CVS

Not wired to save? Fuck off! We are collectively underpaid, you disingenuous shitwit!
- The factory i work at has had three 45¢ raises since 2008. Sure the $20/hour was great during the recession, but it's hardly enough to live on today, and that's over double my state's minimum wage.
  
  I remember reading a study from about 10-20 years ago that found the average income for Americans to actually get by with enough to make it to retirement and have adequate healthcare was $75,000 a year. It's probably much higher now too: The increasing levels of disparity are just fucking disgusting.

I'm just going assume they wanted to say "not wired enough money to save" but forgot the middle part
- Can you expand?

I sold my car and quit driving altogether and bought a bike and scooter and I save money now.
If I made more money I could have that luxury but take a look around, so many car loans are shit. The cars are shit too. And drivers keep getting worse imo.
Cars are a huge drain on the wallet and an unnecessary expense for many.
- Good for you!
  Of course, because of the car-centric nature of the US, you have to already live in area that a bike or scooter can get you around in. That discounts a lot of the rural US.
- Yup. People don't think about it like that too often. It's presented as a necessity, but there are no budget options. They're a never ending expense.
  
  Cars are regularly called money pits.
  Owning almost any type of vehicle is going to necessitate maintenance, there's a classic saying that the two best days in a boat owner's life are the day they buy the boat and the day they sell the boat.

Controversial thought maybe, but I indeed have many friends who should and could afford to save, and choose not to.
None of these friends are wealthy or have high salary's, they're just bad with money
- Yeah, I'm curious as to what percentage of that group simply can't afford to save, and the percentage that simply choose to spend instead. Like you, I know people who certainly could be saving money, but instead have new phones all the time and also are driving leased luxury cars.
- Saving is slow and boring, it’s easier just to get a credit card and buy something cool. Much more of a rush va seeing a number go up a tiny bit every month.

The rich not only control the media, but vast swaths of our academics as well. Especially so-called economists and "business experts", like the bootlicker quoted here.
These people know nothing about neurology or psychology. They're being paid to repeat bullshit so people get complacent (and worse, use their 'expertise' to influence lawmaking).
- but vast swaths of our academics as well
  They literally drive what academia cares about. They're the reason there's been so much push to drop all arts and humanities, because FUCK CRITICAL THINKING AMIRITE?
  
  Precisely. Our education system is deeply mired in the muck of privatized funding of public education. Hopefully we can root this shit out and enforce some regulations soon.
  Honestly just restricting private donations and forcing them to fucking pay taxes like the rest of us would fix a large part of this.

i would save if i actually had something to save; and i suspect many are in the same boat.
- Wow, it’s like encouraging people to live on credit and debt is actually bad for people!
  I seriously hate how much the US fucks over people who can’t make enough to even consider saving money; overdraft fees from banks, having to get loans and debt in order to pay for big expenses, punishing people who need to use credit by lowering their credit score… list goes on and on.
  
  as the saying goes, it's expensive to be poor.

Feck off.

“We’re just not wired to save,” said Brad Klontz
Asshole. Like THAT's the problem.
- Yeah that jumped out at me too. What a privileged bunch of crap to spew.
  Our brains are instead programmed to focus on our immediate needs.
  Yes, we are "programmed" to buy things that we need to live, like food, shelter, and medicine. I'm pretty sure most people would save if they fucking could. You'd think that "a certified financial planner and expert in financial psychology and behavioral finance" could come up with something a bit better than another avocado-toast-like victim blaming.

Here's what happens, at least to me: If I manage to have extra money, I start saving and build up a little nest egg, then need to empty it because of an unexpected expense. And then I start saving again only for that to happen again.

We're wired to save, if we make enough money to be able to save.
Most people I know do save, put quite a bit of effort in it too.
And then when they've saved up some money, one of these unexpected expenses happens that resets them to zero.
And these unexpected expenses keep happening at a shorter interval, causing people that do save to also not have enough buffer to pay for a $1000 unexpected expense AGAIN.
I also know quite a few people that saved a lot over the years, to then see it go up in smoke when COVID hit and life became 50% more expensive in the span of 3 years.
It's rather revolting how transparent these narcissistic projections have become.
It's never their (the people defining the rules of the economy, like this expert) fault, it's always the victims (all of us).

It has nothing to do with “wiring”. It’s a lack of education.

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