28% of the Country Has Saved NOTHING!

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zero zip zero zilch nada nothing 28 % of the country has saved nothing for retirement 39 % are not contributing to any sort of savings retirement fund 30 % don’t think that they’ll ever be able to retire.

25 and 35 % of all demographics between the ages of 18 and 64 report having nothing saved at all. Okay, go along with this. American debt stings like never before in new era for households. And this story talks about how, well, you know, people have a really difficult time.

right now because the Fed has had higher rates, delinquency rates on credit cards and auto loans are the highest in more than a decade. Interest payments on those and other non -mortgage debts are as big a financial burden for US households as mortgage interest payments. Hmm, the era of high borrowing costs, however necessary to slow price increases, has a sting of its own that many families may feel for years to come, especially ones that haven’t locked in cheap home loans.

Monthly debt payments take up more of workers’ paychecks. And again, those consumers are more exposed to potential economic contractions. I take a look at this and they cite various different people and anecdotal and talking about the type of debt that they have. And then you tie that in with the zero that 28 % of the country has saved. And well, first and foremost,

Okay. Credit card debt. You don’t purchase things on a credit card unless you can pay that credit card off in full, unless of course it is a major emergency. Other than that, you don’t buy it.

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You understand that you are paying rates that you would be paying Tony Soprano on credit cards and people, I was right. That’s it. They’re terrible. It’s awful what those pigs do. Wait a second. OK, I’m going to play both sides of the coin here. You go and you put your vacation on a credit card that you can’t afford and you don’t pay the credit card back. We don’t have debtors prisons here in the United States.

How does a credit card company recoup a vacation?

or a dinner that you went on. No, they lost. It’s an unsecured debt. Of course, the interest is going to be high on something like that. That makes sense, right?

Anyway, I’m reading these stories and I went back in time to a movie that was quite popular when I was much younger, in college. And it was kind of like, it was a Gen X kind of coming of X, coming of age, coming of age movie took place, interesting enough, in Seattle, the grunge scene, Pearl Jam was in it.

Soundgarden had a, no, no, sound, yeah, yeah, yeah. Chris Cornell was in at the time, Alison Chains, Matt Dillon, it’s called Singles. I enjoyed the movie, great soundtrack as well. Bridget Fonda had a pretty neat role in that and she, in the movie, they broke the third wall where they would actually talk to the camera and she played this character, Janet Livermore, where…

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she was talking about how she was young, she’s 23 years old, and she says, you know, I think I’m running out of time to do something kind of crazy, fun, bizarre, because she made an important point. She said somewhere around 25. Bizarre becomes immature.

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pretty interesting statement that you make, and I’ll, it’s true.

It’s true. If you haven’t figured stuff out, you know, by the time you’re in mid 20s, when it comes to money and the cost of money and building a future and what’s going to get you on the right path, I don’t know what to tell you. You are immature.

Going out and spending money. Last week we did a podcast on bougie broke. These people going, oh, yeah, spending it, spending it, spending it. Oh, look at this, look at me, but I’m broke. I live in paycheck to paycheck. You’re immature.

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And you’re going to have to make the changes in life if you want to turn this around. Yeah, we see story after story after story. And trust me, I get it. I get how expensive things are. I get how much more difficult it is. I understand the terrain. We’ve talked about the terrain, but just because it’s difficult or more difficult, it doesn’t give you an excuse.

Zero, so 28 % of the country, zero saved. I take a look at credit card debt. Oh, come on.

Come on, I mean, go through, go through, see what you need to cut, see what you gotta cut out of your budget to get all of this in line.

Because all you’re doing is you’re putting yourself in a position where you’re digging a hole and you keep digging and you keep digging and you keep digging. And you know, you might have to declare bankruptcy. I don’t know, ruin your credit, but you put yourself in a situation as this goes on, which becomes more and more untenable. And yeah, you can fix it. And it’s not going to be easy, but you can do it. Why? Why? I mean, you take a look.

you take a look and it’s kind of like delayed gratification has gone, I don’t know, out of style. I don’t know when it went out of style. I understand wanting to enjoy life and wanting to go ahead and do things and wanting to go on vacations and all this stuff. But you’ve got to get to a point in time where you settle yourself and you build up a base and you build up some wealth and you get yourself on the right path where you can afford it.

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where you don’t have to open up your bills the next month with fear and trepidation, saying, oh my, what did I do?

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Again, financial situation, financial health of people in this country. And again, I’ve talked about keeping up with the Joneses on steroids, with social media and whatnot. Sometime at a point in time, you gotta listen to Janet Livermore from Singles. You gotta stop being immature. You gotta grow up. Watchdogonwallstreet .com.