Even wealthy Americans are struggling to make ends meet
Even wealthy Americans are struggling to make ends meet
About one in three Americans making six-figure salaries are worried about paying their bills, according to a new survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
The article is calling people who make between $100k to $150k a year wealthy.
It's barely middle class for most places now.
Most major metros*
Yeah, but like, isn't that where the majority of people live?
So when talking about "most places" it makes sense for it to be "places most likely for people to live". If it was literally "most places" America is pretty fucking empty.
I googled it, the average price for an acre in Kansas is like 3.5k.
In "most places" it's cheap as hell. But no one lives there so why talk about it?
What a joke of a headline. That's not what making ends meet means. They are wealthy, by definition they can afford to make ends meet.
Two observations:
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As others pointed out, there are an awful lot of people who live in places where $100-150k is not close to wealthy. A small number of large, expensive cities has a giant percentage of the population.
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How is anyone surprised that when inflation stays up for a while, people find it hard to maintain their standard of living. When you compare the person making $150k to the person making $100k, it doesn't mean that they're pocketing $50k every year, it means that they're likely renting a more expensive place or paying on a more expensive car. They're likely both just living within their means and, of you make everything in life cost more, both are going to have a hard time paying their bills. It's not until you get to people who are making more than they can spend that that changes.
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If they're struggling to male ends meet then they aren't wealthy, are they?
Time to move the goalposts along for what's defined as 'wealthy'
See, they’re just like us.
Income needed to be considered middle class in each state from Zippia report.
Hawaii $122,695 California $111,206 Massachusetts $85,567 Colorado $81,602 Washington $81,203 New York $75,403 Oregon $74,865 New Jersey $74,485 Maryland $71,844 Utah $71,034 Nevada $70,752 Virginia $67,197 Alaska $63,873 Connecticut $63,375 New Hampshire $62,890 Rhode Island $62,691 Arizona $61,699 Delaware $60,015 Montana $59,496 Minnesota $58,903 Idaho $58,866 Florida $58,833 Texas $55,605 Vermont $55,371 Wyoming $54,849 Georgia $54,213 Illinois $53,961 North Dakota $52,935 Maine $51,608 Pennsylvania $51,346 North Carolina $51,144 Tennessee $50,629 Wisconsin $50,062 Louisiana $49,587 South Carolina $49,110 New Mexico $48,602 South Dakota $48,258 Michigan $47,044 Nebraska $46,906 Missouri $46,649 Kansas $46,485 Alabama $45,559 Oklahoma $44,008 Iowa $43,997 Ohio $43,949 Kentucky $43,747 Indiana $43,310 Mississippi $41,839 West Virginia $41,649 Arkansas $40,928
What kind of bullshit numbers are these? I live Arkansas. If you make $40,928 and live here, you are poor. Not even close to "middle class."
The parts of the state(s) where nobody lives are driving down the number. For Missouri that number is accurate if you live 3 hours from any city with more than one zip code.
Is this household or individual income? Either way, whack
In Louisiana I make twice that amount. I'm barely middle class.
That’s on you. Probably time to look into your spending.
A frustratingly empty article. Why are they struggling to "make ends meet"? What ends? If it's housing, this is a housing story. If it's high auto loan debt, that's a mother matter. If it's not housing and it's accrued consumer debt, that's a different matter.
They never say, so there isn't much to conclude from this piece.
They're extrapolating trends from just over ONE year of data. The survey was started in 2023, which means statements like this ring very hollow:
Second, the year-over-year change in worry for this population is large and significant. In April 2023, 20.7 percent of those who could currently pay all of their bills were worried about the next six months; one year later, 26.2 percent reported worries, with nearly every demographic group showing large and significant increases as well. We did not observe such a year-over-year increase in our previous report (comparing January 2023 with January 2024).
And from that we get Matt Egan's overarching conclusion that "wealthy Americans are struggling to make ends meet", which conflicts with the findings that only 6.9% of people earning more than $150k/yr are reporting that they can't currently make ends meet (6% of those making more than $100k/yr). Or, in other words, 93.1% of people earning more than $150k/yr can currently make ends meet. (someone tell Egan!) But the surveyors go on to claim that it's a significant uptick from 3.4% a year ago, which is true (yay!). You know what it's not a significant uptick from? The very next survey (i.e. July), which tallied a 6% rate of not being able to make ends meet. That number then fell to 3.0% in October before jumping again in January, then again in April.
Those numbers go up significantly when forecasting out 0-6 months, and then 7-12 months. The numbers for high earners go up to 32.5% and 33%, respectively. You know what's happening in just under 6 months? A pretty significant election! And to what do these high earners attribute their inability to make ends meet? Job insecurity? Medical expenses? Global instability? Inflation?
Who the fuck knows?! The survey is decidedly silent on that front. But that didn't stop Matt Egan from scrapping together the most fear-inducing, clickbait headline he could muster for our next dose of doom-fuel.
Yeah people tend to spend what they make. Larger incomes are spent on bigger houses and nicer cars. But larger incomes have more wiggle room to cut back and afford the basics if they have to.
No they aren’t. Clickbait