The current economic environment is ideal for shopping around for high-yield savings products and building your emergency savings.
  • soloner@lemmy.world
    10627·
    9 months ago

    Ok let’s poll Lemmy. Upvote me if you can. Downvote me if you can’t. I can so I’ll keep my own upvote.

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
      22·
      9 months ago

      Can’t see downvotes, assume everyone is okay. New article: 190% of people on Lemmy can afford a $1,000 emergency expense

      Edit: 190% was a typo, but leaving it in there

        • DillyDaily@lemmy.world
          5·
          9 months ago

          Or just broadly financially literate people. I only make $34k AUD.

          I’m incredibly fortunate that my parents were able to teach me financial literacy. I’m also incredibly lucky that I have the personality type to be happy “slumming it”, almost taking a sick pride in how far I can make a 50c bar of soap stretch to clean my entire body, house and laundry, so living within my means has been possible even when my means is a couch in a 4 bedroom share house with 10 roommates. (some of the best years of my life, which is far from the usual sharehouse experience)

          Because of a congenial illness, my start in the work force was delayed and is still partly inhibited. But I made a point to put a bare minimum of $20 from every pay cheque straight into a term deposit that I couldn’t touch. When it hit $1000, it moved into a more accessible emergency account, and began saving up the term deposit again. When things are easy I bump that savings contribution up as much as I can. The emergency fund is now a comfortable 5k, with another 10k in the term deposit, that’s 15 years years of savings. The only reason it’s as much as it is, is because I’ve been incredibly lucky to have very few genuine emergencies that require immediate payment. If I can put an unexpected expense on a payment plan, I do.

          There are “emergencies” I have ignored because the cost wasn’t worth it. I’ve had 9 teeth extracted, I probably could have saved them all if I forked out a few thousand for a root canal, but it made more financial sense to just let them get bad enough that I could get them extracted for free at the dental school, since now I will never have to worry about those teeth them (I’ll only have to worry about jaw bone loss).

          I’m lucky that I never had to get involved with credit card debt. I didn’t have “the bank of mum and dad”, but between my 60 cousins and 20 friends, I can borrow $10-20 from everyone to cover something big, and pay it back slowly interest free, and I make sure I do the same for them, it’s only $20 after all. I relied on that a lot when I was young and still building my emergency fund, and that’s certainly a privilege not everyone has.

          I’m privileged to be financially educated and have a social safety net, but by the living standards set by my country, I’m far from wealthy.

    • GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.socialEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      Depends. I have enough in savings to cover the cost, sure, but there’s only enough in savings because I’ve been transferring about 25% of my paycheck to savings for the past 2 years in order to afford a wedding/honeymoon. So I’d just be pushing myself into a larger credit debt after the bills come due for the wedding services.

      • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
        55·
        9 months ago

        Wedding/honeymoon, what a fucking waste of money you’ve been suffering for the past two years to throw away all that hard-earned income on a one-week transitory moment 🤦‍♀️

        • Zron@lemmy.world
          31·
          9 months ago

          Pfft, fresh fruit and eggs for breakfast. What a waste of hard earned money for a 10 minute transitory moment.

          • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
            3·
            9 months ago

            do you transfer 25% of all your income for 2 years to a fund devoted to one 10-minute breakfast of fresh fruit & eggs?

            • Zron@lemmy.world
              1·
              9 months ago

              Doesn’t matter the amount of money or the time.

              The fact is that creating enjoyable memories for yourself or as a couple is important for a relationship. Having a nice vacation in general is important for mental health, especially if you’re an American who likely almost never gets to be truly away from work.

              Disparaging someone for saving money for a vacation is just an elitist attitude.

              You could survive off of multivitamins, rice and beans for the rest of your life if you really wanted to not waste money. Yet you’re now defensive of a mediocre breakfast. So at what point does spending money on “transitory moments” become wasteful to you.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
      11·
      9 months ago

      “We did it boys! Maximum efficiency! We extract literally every dollar possible from the peons! They have nothing left when we’re done!”

  • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.eeEnglish
    281·
    9 months ago

    this is an excellent time to introduce the idea that The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does. Not what it claims to do. Not what it tries but fails to do. What it does. You can be confident that every system is operating as-designed, doubly so when the “failures” of the system benefit the designers.

  • over_clox@lemmy.world
    319·
    9 months ago

    We live in a society where it’s advisable for everyone to carry tampons, whether female or male, just in case of a gunshot wound ☹️

    • 3ntranced@lemmy.world
      143·
      9 months ago

      A good 30% of us should be wearing ballistics vests outdoors with the current shooting rates

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
        120·
        9 months ago

        Sadly I agree ☹️

        Still, I got the nuts to literally pull the barrel to my head and dare them to do it.

        They think twice when I do that, and I’m still here.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
          153·
          9 months ago

          That might be how it works for Hollywood tough guys, but that’s not how it works in real life.

          In reality, when someone holds a gun to you and you tell them to go ahead and shoot, they aren’t impressed and intimidated by how much of a badass you are, they just shoot you.

          • over_clox@lemmy.world
            113·
            9 months ago

            Excuse you, but I’m telling real life here. I have zero fucks to give.

            My own nerve to retaliate in such a way shocked my potential attackers so much that they didn’t know what to do.

            • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
              91·
              9 months ago

              Excuse you, but I’m telling real life here. I have zero fucks to give.

              Yeah and I’m the king of Nepal 😄

              My own nerve to retaliate in such a way shocked my potential attackers so much that they didn’t know what to do.

              Suuure it did… 🙄

          • over_clox@lemmy.world
            121·
            9 months ago

            Oh I love it, folks can hate me all day long. Guess who is still alive, after having a gun pulled to my head more than once.

            I have a force to my voice that’ll make anyone piss their pants, when I need to use such voice anyways.

            • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
              171·
              9 months ago

              I have a force to my voice that’ll make anyone piss their pants, when I need to use such voice anyways

              And I can shoot lightning bolts out of my ass.

              • Sciaphobia@lemm.eeEnglish
                6·
                9 months ago

                Better be careful. He sounds like he means business. You don’t wanna be on the receiving end of the piss voice.

                • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
                  32·
                  9 months ago

                  I wonder if his piss voice conducts electricity like its namesake, in which case I better watch my ass while farting around him 🤔

        • over_clox@lemmy.world
          118·
          9 months ago

          I see I’ve been downvoted, not like I care.

          I’m smart enough to analyze my opponent, and even smarter to know when the gun ain’t loaded.

          Do you folks have any idea how fast people shit their pants when they realize they tried to shoot you in the head with what you already knew was an unloaded gun?

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    201·
    9 months ago

    We’re fucked. But Lonnie can still buy a company and run it into the ground, so the system works!

  • oakey66@lemmy.world
    16·
    9 months ago

    What’s so frustrating is watching people online ridicule the perception that we’re not doing great collectively as a nation. If the bottom falls out and the 56% get wrecked financially the other 44% are going to feel it. And having anxiety about that is perfectly understandable.

    • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml
      71·
      9 months ago

      The other 43% will feel it, the 1% will profit enormously when they pick up their assets for pennies on the dollar

  • mister_monster@monero.townEnglish
    204·
    9 months ago

    I wonder if said money expert had the balls to explain why nobody saves money in the US. He touched on it just a little. He mentioned we are implored to spend. Not implored. Incentivized.

    Every time a politician gets on TV and says we have to “stimulate the economy”, what he means is he has to incentivize you to blow your paycheck the minute you get it. This is done by increasing the rate at which your money loses purchasing power. Then, when it’s time for reelection, he will inevitably mention the fact that Americans can’t afford a $1000 emergency expense. Wages need to go up! It’s not the wage rate that makes us poor. It’s the debasement rate of the currency. The debasement rate is a mechanism of wealth redistribution. Wealth is transferred using the cantillion effect from the poor to the rich.