Ask Lemmy

I do well enough to comfortably support my wife and me. I have a retirement plan, put a small amount into saving, and don't buy things on credit (besides to pay them off immediately for rewards points). I have paid off my car and it should last me a good long while. I do have student loans outstanding but I pay those down and my work provides a stipend each month that effectively doubles my payment on that. I have some small investment accounts to play the stock market, but not life-changing money. We have plenty of money leftover after the mortgage to live just as comfortably as I would like.

This all being said, I am an outlier in the current economy. Most are paid too little for too much work and I would happily pay more for most products if I thought the money was going to the employees, but I know they are given the smallest amount possible.

Barely surviving, but not from everyday expenses. Got two kids in college and this year FAFSA decided not to give any help to anyone so all expenses are on me.

Started paying off debt, saving, and investing consistently over 25 years ago. It has really worked out, and my wife and I are more financially secure than most. Even still, we're one health crisis away from potential bankruptcy, because we live in the United States.

we're fiiinnneeeee. could be better

Average at best.

every time I read one of those statistics, I feel the same way.

I'm doing very well relative to that statistic.

I live fairly simply, but I don't consider myself particularly frugal.

I like traveling, learning, eating, watching and reading stuff, and making things, which are all pretty cheap interests.

If I were to credit anything with my financial success, it would be a practiced awareness of financial opportunity and persistently learning about and attempting every viable opportunity I'm interested in to gain a practical knowledge of cost-benefit streams.

I've tried many ways to make money and work less, and some of them worked out.

I'm traveling this year, so I save most of my income, and with the IRS' FEIE I don't pay income tax(up to 120k).

I have a few investments and some ten thousands accruing interest.

i don't have immediate plans, but I want to buy some land at some point, basically so I have more area to build stuff and make stuff, sign up for cryonics and get a new electric bike or the Aptera if it every goes into production.

c'mon aptera.

I'm tied down by one financial anchor and have opted to add two more smaller ones on top of that for giggles. I live very comfortably paycheck to paycheck, if I need to save for anything I can fairly easily put away around 3k a month. I can afford a random 1k expense without issue, currently anything above 2k would be a bit tougher, but still manageable.

It sounds crazy to you because you have apparently had success handed to you through no work or special virtue of your own. Maybe get out of your comfy bubble a bit

I read that half of Americans couldn’t cover an unexpected $1,000 expense.

Without borrowing or selling property, yeah. Not a lot of people have that much liquid cash laying around.

But I wouldn't assume that this would be some kind of economic devastation. Our whole system revolves around easy credit.

If the unexpected expense is something that can be paid for on a credit card, that 20% interest isn't exactly ideal but for many people it can be a simple task of buying now and paying it off over 2 or 3 months. For them, $1000 isn't a lifestyle changing expense.

For others, $1000 might be devastating. It might be the difference between making rent or not, and ultimately lead to eviction and maybe even homelessness.

So liquidity is a different question from financial health or resilience, even if they're somewhat correlated. There are other metrics out there more directly measuring financial stability or vulnerability.