chapotraphouse

Biden’s policies are a radical non-break from Trump’s and it’s crazy to me how there isn’t more hay made about that

Nothing will fundamentally change, Jack

Honestly, even 10k isn't a large enough safety net in case something goes really wrong

if you measure it before rent is due maybe

when I was poor I struggled to have non-0 savings. I have a graph of my savings from the last decade. I was really excited when I could sometimes get it to nearly $500 before it crashed to zero

I'm doing better now. I hope I never forget where I came from

It is median. So it tracks the 12.5%th poorest American. Only people with bank accounts apply.

There needs to be two pro wrestlers who are always at each other's throats. One wears a big neck chain with a huge cross. The other wears a lanyard with a use security card. And they are both heels.

We went to Mexico for dental work

The short answer is Americans are fucked. The slightly longer: While there may be a slight improvement in savings from 2020 to 2023, there was a point where people were trending upwards in savings before it took a dive down and stagnated, which people both will notice and rightly be upset with. This fact is more significant to the population.

That is, being "I got up to 3k in my savings two years ago and thought I was finally getting ahead and now it's down to 2.2k because of life." Is more meaningful to a person than "Well three years ago you had 2k and now you have 2.2k after those three years of trying to save, you're doing better, guys, better appreciate Biden's economy"

Or: losing 800 dollars over 2 years means more to a person's psyche than gaining 200 over 3 years.

I had to look back at the graph after the explanations so here's the shortest version

• "politicians say it's good you've gone from the left line to the right line - an increase in nearly $1000 on average"

• "they ignore line 2 in the middle which shows that people went up more than twice as much before coming down again to nearly where they were before"

• so while it's true to say there's been an increase, it's equally true to say there has been a massive decrease too.

• people who actually have to live like this won't find it helpful to make a comparison to when they had slightly less money when there was a more recent time that they had a lot more money

It's personal banking balances. The focus is on three points: January 2020, January 2021, and January 2023. ~~#2 is Biden's inauguration.~~ Edit... The very annoying lib pointed that out to me that #2 is the enactment of the "American Rescue Act of 2021" in March, 2021.

Any economist can look at the vertical line of #1 and #3 but entirely skip #2 and say "There's been an increase from 2020 to 2023." A huge problem in economics is that many of economists never speak to typical people and they especially avoid poor people. Their heads are only filled with numbers and data.

They often act like typical people are morons who don't know anything and don't understand anything. They are smug when polling shows many Americans feel worse off. But people are concerned about the fall from #2 to #3.

Of course - economics colors the media and politics. Pundit brain and DC brain etc are similar to economist brain. Biden and his team come out with PR that "Bidenomics is working!" without understanding how typical Americans will view their rose-colored perspective. Democrats are flummoxed why people don't get it.

This is all very predictable yet it happens all the time

Yeah I had to look at this at least 4 or 5 times before I understood it lol

/r/dataisugly

Yes. People judge their circumstances in terms of relativity compared to their most recent circumstances.

Pretty much this graph is showing the effect of the COVID economic relief efforts, and how those effects have dropped off since those efforts ended. By the time we get to 2024 I wouldn't be surprised if we're below where we were before 2020 on this and other metrics since AFAIK that was the trend before COVID happened.

Don't worry it's coming

I don't think the recommendation of "3-6 months of income in a quickly accessible emergency fund" scales well. If you don't make much and could need to buy another beater car after your current one inevitably dies, sure. But if you make significantly more, to the point where you max out your retirement accounts, what's wrong with using a brokerage account for savings? I can have that money ready to spend in 7 business days and can use my credit card and checking account in the meantime. Yeah, risk, blah-blah-blah, but going with a guaranteed almost-zero is a suckers' game while the line is still generally going up.

dont forget that a lot of people who get fat account numbers slap the reset button by dumping all of it into a down payment on a house

I just thought that was because most of the high income people I know are fools, not that they were a representative sample

well from my personal experience, i'd say they probably are a representative sample. The world is run by complete clowns and we're beginning to see the consequences.