This sort of delusion bullshit just goes to show that "financial planners" and "experts" have no idea how most of the USA actually lives.
In fact, less than 60% of our country now earns enough to live a secure middle-class existence. Almost no one can afford to save any money, much less a "three to six months of living expenses." Almost everyone is in debt -- almost always due to living expenses, including medical expenses. Only 40% of the country can handle a $400 emergency.
This is America right now.
Frankly, I am impressed that Ocasio-Cortez had $7000 in the bank, and I promise you she only had that much because she had no children, and has had no medical emergencies. Before I was married and before I had cancer, I had a big chunk of money saved too.
"Plan to save 15%" is charming advice. Plan all you like. Life has other plans.
6 comments:
This is fairly tale bullshit if I ever read it. Wow.
Co-signed.
The problem with financial planners is that they only work with people who have money to spare and don't know what to do with it. Sadly, that's not many of us.
Yep.
I had a tiff -- not an argument, exactly, just a brief exchange -- with a 24 year old 'financial planner' on Twitter who lectured me about how he could "fix" my budget, if I would just turn my finances over to him.
"Of course," he said, "you would probably get pretty angry when I showed you that some of your 'needs' were really just 'wants.'"
That's the attitude of someone who has grown up in a 1% household, and whose parents probably still support him -- though I'm sure he probably went straight from Yale into a job paying $200,000/year.
He's sure that anyone who is poor is poor because we're frittering our money away on lattes and, I don't know, tattoos and fancy meals at the Cheesecake Factory every night. Shopping sprees at Macey's? I have no idea.
In fact, as all of use who make less than sixty a year know, we buy coffee at Starbucks (or wherever) less than twice a month (twice a semester for me), almost never eat out, and budget for three straight months before we buy a new pair of jeans.
Every time I read those stupid fucking articles on "How YOU can SAVE MONEY and PAY DOWN YOUR DEBTS!!!" I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Yeah, let me cancel my trip to the South of France and stop spending $600 a month on having my nails done and $300 a week on eating out, wow, what a great idea.
The easiest way to fix your budget from what I've read is to go back in time and implement universal health care in the US before you got huge medical bills. He should get on that-- it would help a lot of people's budgets.
I had one guy over on Twitter tell me I should just stop "expecting" things to go wrong. Why didn't I think of that!
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