Quote:
Originally Posted by GreyWolf
Sure.. can see this can be a reason for the personal debt level. It does not take much to rock that boat on a personal basis with a few large bills and cause severe financial hardship.
No idea to what degree it will have an effect, but bear in mind a low dollar will mean all imports are going to cost more and this will trickle down to end users/consumers to pay the bill. People don't even have to travel to feel the impact of that.
It's amazing that US people are .. think at the top of the list for work hours, but the net income appears so low... unless we got our figures screwed up  |
well, they say most people in the US are about 3 paychecks from being homeless. That may be an overstatement because it would take a bank or landlord several months to evict you, but I can say that of a group of 10 people I know that make pretty decent money (somewhere around or more than the average) there is only 1 of them that actually has any money in savings. So if the money stops coming in they are screwed.
People don't look at what they can afford, they look at what they want. They buy houses, cars and then get credit cards and max them out. While the average household makes around 43K a year, CNN reported that the average family (meaning the family that makes 43K a year) has around $9200 in credit card debt that they are paying and average of 12% interest on, owes about $58,000 in principle on their mortgage and has over $10,000 in car debt.
If you are a family that brings in 43K before taxes and you pay a total of 25% to taxes (including state, federal and social security) that means you are going to see around 30K in bring home which is around $2500 a month. If you are paying the nationwide average of $350 a month for you car, plus the nationwide average of $1300 for a mortgage and at least $150 towards your average credit card debt (and that is basically just paying off the interest each month) you already have burned through $1800 of your $2500 leaving you just $700 for insurance, food, utilities, gas, clothes and everything else.
It's not a wonder that 1 out of every 100 people in this country declare bankruptcy and that 96% of people will end up relying strictly on social security, family and charity for support when they get too old to work.