Our Financial Failings:Family Savings Look Scary Across the Board

[Judi Lynn]

Our Financial Failings
Family Savings Look Scary Across the Board

By Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 5, 2006; Page F01

Meet the typical American family.

It has about $3,800 in the bank. No one has a retirement account, and the neighbors who do only have about $35,000 in theirs. Mutual funds? Stocks? Bonds? Nope. The house is worth $160,000, but the family owes $95,000 on it to the bank. The breadwinners make more than $43,000 a year but can't manage to pay off a $2,200 credit card balance.

Lower Income
Rein in Spending to Build A Cushion for Emergencies
The biggest challenge facing lower-income Americans is that they don't make enough money. That statement may seem so blindingly obvious as to be unhelpful, but financial planners say there are ways to boost the finances of those with a family income of $25,700 a year -- short of helping them find...

That is the portrait of the median American household as painted by the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances. The survey, which does not distinguish between sizes of families, nevertheless offers the most detailed look available of the balance sheet of U.S. households.
(snip)

"This is awfully sobering," said Peter Speros, managing director of Sullivan, Bruyette, Speros & Blayney Inc., a wealth-management firm in McLean. "These numbers are just so much worse than I would have thought. It's a real eye-opener."
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/04/AR2006030400238.html

[FloridaPat]

1. And we're the richest country in the world? I wonder what those

figures looked like under Clinton.

[tecelote]

2. They've got us exactly where they want us.

[Poppyseedman]

3. Interesting article. It reads like my life in the past two years.

The numbers are almost all on target for my situation.

Even the $35,000,in a retirement account before being layed off from a better paying job two years ago. I used a lot of that in transition so I could survive on a lower income and getting my financial house in order.

At one time I was putting $800 a month into retirement accounts, but not anymore. That is really my biggest concern. My current liquid assets are no longer big enough to grow enough to retire at the means I wanted to. I have even considered getting a second job to simply put away in IRA, stocks, and other growth vehicles.

I find most people have no idea how to manage their assets and live within their means.

The MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO IS PAY OFF YOUR CREDIT CARD DEBT.

[HockeyMom]

4. Increase of those in poverty

and more middle class slipping into it. I do believe that IS the plan. The total elimination of the middle class. It fits the picture of Bush's society.

And I thought the Reagan era was bad?

[teryang]

5. The statutory system bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists

...has transferred the corporate tax burden to individuals;

...exports America's capital, manufacturing, and jobs overseas, where they can profit from cheap labor and no regulations;

...gives corporate America the benefit of American market infrastructure while they take all their profits overseas in wholly or majority owned subsidiaries which pay no US taxes at all.

...directs tax revenues away from human resources, education, and health, to the war industry which adds nothing to productivity and attempts to seize markets and resources overseas by force to compensate for lack of competitiveness and adaptability.

Now the media propaganda says Americans don't save enough.

[gizmo1979]

6. If you barely make enough to

survive,there's nothing left to put away.So in that immortal line from animal house"What we suppose to do you moran"!

[Porcupine]

7. Hah!! I'm worse off than that by far and I'm a manager.

I'll make about $38K this year up from $30 last year. I have zero savings, zero retirement, ditto healthcare, equity or other assets. I have my tools, a beat up truck and my skills. I have a drawer full of resume's from people apparently as skilled as I am.

We have people in this town squatting in apartments where they cannot be evicted easily. There are thousands in my proseperous little town just barely making it; literally one illness away from ruin. I'm one of them. Of course if I get any bad luck my ex will also see to it that my kids are once again taken away from me.

America is a disaster right now. We just refuse to acknowledge it.