78% of USA workers live paycheck to paycheck

I would think 'Government' workers live pretty close to the line since they think they will have a job forever.
 
Give them a 25% raise and most would still live paycheck to paycheck. I know far too many people like that and it isn't because they are minimum wage workers. One of my brothers is one of them. Makes $35/hr and can work all the over time he wants to work and pisses it away.
 
Kacper said:
Give them a 25% raise and most would still live paycheck to paycheck. I know far too many people like that and it isn't because they are minimum wage workers. One of my brothers is one of them. Makes $35/hr and can work all the over time he wants to work and pisses it away.
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Is he happy?
 
Phantasmal said:
Is he happy?
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I don't know. We aren't sisters who discuss our feelings while drinking wine and having pillow fights in the Jacuzzi. I know he hates working 12 hour shifts but now that his house is almost paid off, they are talking about selling it and building a new on because why put yourself in a position in which you don't have to work at a job you hate for 20 more years to pay off a new mortgage because your RN wife thinks she should live in the same neighborhood as the doctors she works for.
 
Kacper said:
Give them a 25% raise and most would still live paycheck to paycheck. I know far too many people like that and it isn't because they are minimum wage workers. One of my brothers is one of them. Makes $35/hr and can work all the over time he wants to work and pisses it away.
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Sadly this is very true. Many people think if they get a raise or make a little more money their problems will go away but when they make that extra money they now want a nicer car or bigger home or something along those lines. Then they find themselves back in the exact same financial position as before
 
Kacper said:
I don't know. We aren't sisters who discuss our feelings while drinking wine and having pillow fights in the Jacuzzi. I know he hates working 12 hour shifts but now that his house is almost paid off, they are talking about selling it and building a new on because why put yourself in a position in which you don't have to work at a job you hate for 20 more years to pay off a new mortgage because your RN wife thinks she should live in the same neighborhood as the doctors she works for.
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Pillow fights in a jacuzzi...hmmmm
 
Kacper said:
Give them a 25% raise and most would still live paycheck to paycheck. I know far too many people like that and it isn't because they are minimum wage workers. One of my brothers is one of them. Makes $35/hr and can work all the over time he wants to work and pisses it away.
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Except in rare cases, poor people are poor because they suck at managing money. If someone makes $15/hour but sucks at managing money, they'll suck at managing money at $20/hour.

The automatic assumption by too many is that people don't have enough. The reality is too many actually try to live beyond their means. They try to live a $1 million lifestyle on a $7.25/hour wage.
 
I spent a lot of years paycheck to paycheck. Even worse, I was self employed so you could never rely on a check coming. You got paid when the customer paid you. Sometimes they fuck you and you never see that money. sometimes a fucking judge dismisses the lien you placed against the dirtbag customer's house when the fucker declares bankruptcy and you never see a fucking dime for two weeks worth of work and you laid out
$500 for labor and even more for materials. Ouch, that one fucking hurt. I left Oregon because of that one. What's the point of following licensing rules and all the bonding and insurance if the state allows people to rip you off? Now I'm in columbus and I don't need a license to operate, insurance is a third of the cost in Oregon, and the customers pay nearly double the price without hassles. Fuck Oregon... That's all I have to say about that.

I'm finally not so poor that I have no savings!! Flyover country FTW!
 
cawacko said:
Sadly this is very true. Many people think if they get a raise or make a little more money their problems will go away but when they make that extra money they now want a nicer car or bigger home or something along those lines. Then they find themselves back in the exact same financial position as before
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It is one of the big reasons I absolutely loathe the earned income tax credit. For every person I know who did something practical with theirs, I know at least a dozen people who did stupid shit like buy a pound of pot and smoke it all up in a couple weeks, or eat out at nicer food joints until it was all gone. I have known people to buy a bunch of crap like guns and crossbows they didn't need that ended up lost to pawnshops as soon as they were back to living paycheck to paycheck. It is absolutely ridiculous. My lawyer says February through April is his divorce season because so many people are splitting up fighting over the tax check or getting pissed at each other the second the fun money is gone.
 
tinfoil said:
I spent a lot of years paycheck to paycheck. Even worse, I was self employed so you could never rely on a check coming. You got paid when the customer paid you. Sometimes they fuck you and you never see that money. sometimes a fucking judge dismisses the lien you placed against the dirtbag customer's house when the fucker declares bankruptcy and you never see a fucking dime for two weeks worth of work and you laid out
$500 for labor and even more for materials. Ouch, that one fucking hurt. I left Oregon because of that one. What's the point of following licensing rules and all the bonding and insurance if the state allows people to rip you off? Now I'm in columbus and I don't need a license to operate, insurance is a third of the cost in Oregon, and the customers pay nearly double the price without hassles. Fuck Oregon... That's all I have to say about that.

I'm finally not so poor that I have no savings!! Flyover country FTW!
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You should have picked more reliable customers.
 
CFM said:
Except in rare cases, poor people are poor because they suck at managing money. If someone makes $15/hour but sucks at managing money, they'll suck at managing money at $20/hour.

The automatic assumption by too many is that people don't have enough. The reality is too many actually try to live beyond their means. They try to live a $1 million lifestyle on a $7.25/hour wage.
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I used to have an employee who rented everything. His house, car, his tools, uniform, telephone, washer and dryer. And his wife would not cook. They had two kids and a pile of menus from restaurants all over town. Every Friday he spent the afternoon driving round town paying bills with cash. I pay everything with a credit card and he'd ask me "how do you afford the interest?". He could not understand that the issuing bank pays me 1, 2, sometimes 4 or even 5 percent just to use it.

Another guy would run out of money on Wednesday or Thursday and go hungry until Friday afternoon when he got paid. Then he'd drink all weekend, at bars of course, and eat out every meal until he ran out of money again.

These guys and their friends were always asking to "borrow" money from me and each other. They never intended to pay any of it back.
 
Dark Soul said:
I used to have an employee who rented everything. His house, car, his tools, uniform, telephone, washer and dryer. And his wife would not cook. They had two kids and a pile of menus from restaurants all over town. Every Friday he spent the afternoon driving round town paying bills with cash. I pay everything with a credit card and he'd ask me "how do you afford the interest?". He could not understand that the issuing bank pays me 1, 2, sometimes 4 or even 5 percent just to use it.

Another guy would run out of money on Wednesday or Thursday and go hungry until Friday afternoon when he got paid. Then he'd drink all weekend, at bars of course, and eat out every meal until he ran out of money again.

These guys and their friends were always asking to "borrow" money from me and each other. They never intended to pay any of it back.
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People like that don't understand the concept that using a credit card and paying it off when the bill comes means you've borrowed someone else's money for free. My wife and I do that with almost everything we pay. The trick is having the money to pay the bill and that is done by managing/budgeting properly.

I had a co-worker several years ago that constantly asked others to borrow money. He asked me to borrow once. I did but with a notarized letter stating that it would be paid back by a certain date. Don't remember the amount. At the same time he was poor mouthing about not having enough money to pay his bills, he bought the latest version of the iPhone and signed up for the most expensive plan. The next time he asked to borrow money because he couldn't pay his bills, I told him to eat his phone that it would save him money.
 
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