Approximately 62% of Americans Have Less Than $1,000 in Their Savings Accounts [???]
December 25th, 2015Could this possibly be real? It’s an online survey.
Via: MarketWatch:
Americans are living right on the edge — at least when it comes to financial planning.
Approximately 62% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts and 21% don’t even have a savings account, according to a new survey of more than 5,000 adults conducted this month by Google Consumer Survey for personal finance website GOBankingRates.com. “It’s worrisome that such a large percentage of Americans have so little set aside in a savings account,” says Cameron Huddleston, a personal finance analyst for the site. “They likely don’t have cash reserves to cover an emergency and will have to rely on credit, friends and family, or even their retirement accounts to cover unexpected expenses.”
Well if someone has a retirement account that means they HAVE savings.
prov6yahoo, good point — and I know quite a few people who live paycheck to paycheck but have a retirement account (at least for now).
Does Social Security count as a retirement account, after all the years we’ve been forced to contribute to it? Will it be there in a few years when I’m eligible? I’m not banking on it. Or, maybe it’ll be there, but if inflation kicks in, it’ll be worth less (worthless). Which reminds me… My mother received her notice from the Social Security Admin. the other day stating that there won’t be an increase in her monthly payment for 2016 because the CPI (consumer price index) hasn’t gone up. Hahahahaha. Good example of gov’t accounting games. See shadowstats.com for the real numbers — the CPI is probably about 8%, not 0%:
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
Anyway, back to the article…. Maybe the survey didn’t ask if people have a “savings account” in their mattresses (as they should, given the coming bail-ins).
> Could this possibly be real? It’s an online survey
It’s probably even worse in real life *because* it’s an online survey. I’d expect a phone survey to report even lower savings rates. Also, nearly 10 million USians don’t have a bank account of any kind.