60%+ of Americans do not even have $1,000 in some kind of savings or checking account, as an emergency fund.
We are all being run ragged, most people are in an apparently literally unbelievable amount of debt, because once you have that first month you have to borrow to pay for groceries or ultilities or rent or a medical copay… the debt spiral begins, you basically don’t get out, and the hole gets worse and worse.
Or… theres also a lot of people with less than 0 financial sense, because the average reading level of the US citizenry is that of a 5th to 6th grader, and many people have compulsive shopping addiction habits.
Something like 25% of Americans have negative net equity, ie, they have more debt than all their possessions are worth.
They’re basically debt slaves, whether or not they realize it.
Something like another 25% have basically 0, netted out.
… and that’s all before everyone’s 401ks and pension funds collapse from the Private Equity / Ptivate Capital (read: unregulated lending) firms ongoing implosion… and thats before the dollar gets further and further devalued so that the government can inflate away its real debt payments, which is the strategy the Treasury Sec is pursuing.
Americans in the bottom ~4/5 - 9/10 of society have no fucking clue how bad it is about to get.
most people are in an apparently literally unbelievable amount of debt, because once you have that first month you have to borrow to pay for groceries or ultilities or rent or a medical copay… the debt spiral begins, you basically don’t get out, and the hole gets worse and worse.
This is why I don’t have a credit card. I’m terrified of getting stuck in this loop. I know, I’m supposed to get a card and use it for things I already have the money for, so I can pay it off… but my ADHD brain just thinks, “That’s yet another bill to stay on top of. Another deadline to remember. Another threat if I forget to pay, or get sick one month and have a smaller paycheck in the end and can’t repay it after rent and utilities.” (Because remember - sick pay isn’t a guarantee in the US. My “sick time” at work is combined with “vacation” as “Paid Time Off” and accrues slowly.)
It’s absurd how paying for things with the money you already earned can be seen as a negative. I’d think if one doesn’t have credit for long enough, that should be a good sign that they’ve managed their money properly without needing credit. But no, it doesn’t work that way here. I’m in my upper 30s and have never had a credit card. My “credit score” is entirely based off of past student loans (that I only managed to pay off with help from my father.) Yet if I hadn’t had school debt, I’d have no “credit score” to speak of and might not have been accepted when I applied for my apartment. It’s all so ass-backwards. I mean, I get the logic of “credit” as a sign of responsibility, I just don’t agree with it.
Genuienly, if you have ADHD and don’t think you could manage the regular payments, it probably is the smart move to just not have another thing you need to remember.
There are various ways that you could go for some kind of ‘credit repair’ type thing that would just automatically make payments out of your checking or savings account, or something like that… but that is only really important if your credit scores are like, way, way below 720.
I also think this whole system is assbackwards insane, but as you say with the apartments and such… it just is our social credit score, there are downsides to just not doing anything with it, you do have to ‘play the game’ to some extent, there is no opting out.
I was homeless for 2 years, and its now been about 2 years I’m not homeless.
I ran up some cards to avoid going to jail for stealing food, freezing to death in a blizzard or dying of exposure in a heatwave… and some of my cards (and ids) got stolen, more than once.
I’m still either paying off legit collections or arguing against illegitimate ones, to this day… But I managed to improve from ~530 to ~700 in the last 2 years time, as well as set aside an emergency fund (currently just shy of 3 months of my ongoing CoL), and a bit of investments, and get some actual basic useful home type stuff, and a bit of a shelf stable food pantry, after losing literally everything.
I’ve never gone bankrupt. I’ve never had to go to court or jail over a summary judgement on debt collections.
That’ll be what happens to more and more Americans who have so much debt they either result to fraud or some other crime, or just think they can ignore it.
You can and will get arrested and jailed for not showing up at a court summons that results from debt collection, a lot of Americans don’t seem to understand that.
The other alternative is basically… well you’d have an armed force of your own to stop you from getting picked up by the cops, lets put it that way.
I’m glad you managed to get out of that mess. I’ve had three bouts of homelessness before, the fear of it happening again is ever-looming.
I agree with everything you said and don’t have much more to add. Just that I’m grateful you (and I) aren’t dealing with homelessness at this point in time. It sounds like you have more of an emergency fund than I do (though I’m trying!) This whole country is pay-to-play and if we lose, we just fall to the bottom without any support. Hell, even looking for low-income housing is a massive task in and of itself. Many of us have to literally win a lottery in this country in order to have a home.
People who’ve never been homeless, they don’t understand this country.
Its that simple.
You’re not a real person anymore, you’re garbage that talks for some reason, has the gall to make eye contact for some reason.
And anyone can become homeless rather quickly, if they have a run of sufficiently bad luck, untrusthworthy friends/family, just are the wrong skin color or sexual orientation, etc.
Anybody who has not experienced it is fucking delusional about what this country really is, and I mean that absolutely, doesn’t matter what your ideology or day job is.
But yeah, I had to move halfway across the country, via Greyhound, to find a place to live.
Its not impossible to do this on SSDI alone (I was very seriously injured in my run of homelessness), I’ve managed to do it, but… its extremely difficult.
There were many days I was sure would be my last.
Saw a lot of people die.
Thats my American experience: No one cares, fuck you, die.
Glad you’ve survived it as well, at least thus far.
60%+ of Americans do not even have $1,000 in some kind of savings or checking account, as an emergency fund.
We are all being run ragged, most people are in an apparently literally unbelievable amount of debt, because once you have that first month you have to borrow to pay for groceries or ultilities or rent or a medical copay… the debt spiral begins, you basically don’t get out, and the hole gets worse and worse.
Or… theres also a lot of people with less than 0 financial sense, because the average reading level of the US citizenry is that of a 5th to 6th grader, and many people have compulsive shopping addiction habits.
Something like 25% of Americans have negative net equity, ie, they have more debt than all their possessions are worth.
They’re basically debt slaves, whether or not they realize it.
Something like another 25% have basically 0, netted out.
… and that’s all before everyone’s 401ks and pension funds collapse from the Private Equity / Ptivate Capital (read: unregulated lending) firms ongoing implosion… and thats before the dollar gets further and further devalued so that the government can inflate away its real debt payments, which is the strategy the Treasury Sec is pursuing.
Americans in the bottom ~4/5 - 9/10 of society have no fucking clue how bad it is about to get.
This is why I don’t have a credit card. I’m terrified of getting stuck in this loop. I know, I’m supposed to get a card and use it for things I already have the money for, so I can pay it off… but my ADHD brain just thinks, “That’s yet another bill to stay on top of. Another deadline to remember. Another threat if I forget to pay, or get sick one month and have a smaller paycheck in the end and can’t repay it after rent and utilities.” (Because remember - sick pay isn’t a guarantee in the US. My “sick time” at work is combined with “vacation” as “Paid Time Off” and accrues slowly.)
It’s absurd how paying for things with the money you already earned can be seen as a negative. I’d think if one doesn’t have credit for long enough, that should be a good sign that they’ve managed their money properly without needing credit. But no, it doesn’t work that way here. I’m in my upper 30s and have never had a credit card. My “credit score” is entirely based off of past student loans (that I only managed to pay off with help from my father.) Yet if I hadn’t had school debt, I’d have no “credit score” to speak of and might not have been accepted when I applied for my apartment. It’s all so ass-backwards. I mean, I get the logic of “credit” as a sign of responsibility, I just don’t agree with it.
Genuienly, if you have ADHD and don’t think you could manage the regular payments, it probably is the smart move to just not have another thing you need to remember.
There are various ways that you could go for some kind of ‘credit repair’ type thing that would just automatically make payments out of your checking or savings account, or something like that… but that is only really important if your credit scores are like, way, way below 720.
I also think this whole system is assbackwards insane, but as you say with the apartments and such… it just is our social credit score, there are downsides to just not doing anything with it, you do have to ‘play the game’ to some extent, there is no opting out.
I was homeless for 2 years, and its now been about 2 years I’m not homeless.
I ran up some cards to avoid going to jail for stealing food, freezing to death in a blizzard or dying of exposure in a heatwave… and some of my cards (and ids) got stolen, more than once.
I’m still either paying off legit collections or arguing against illegitimate ones, to this day… But I managed to improve from ~530 to ~700 in the last 2 years time, as well as set aside an emergency fund (currently just shy of 3 months of my ongoing CoL), and a bit of investments, and get some actual basic useful home type stuff, and a bit of a shelf stable food pantry, after losing literally everything.
I’ve never gone bankrupt. I’ve never had to go to court or jail over a summary judgement on debt collections.
That’ll be what happens to more and more Americans who have so much debt they either result to fraud or some other crime, or just think they can ignore it.
You can and will get arrested and jailed for not showing up at a court summons that results from debt collection, a lot of Americans don’t seem to understand that.
The other alternative is basically… well you’d have an armed force of your own to stop you from getting picked up by the cops, lets put it that way.
I’m glad you managed to get out of that mess. I’ve had three bouts of homelessness before, the fear of it happening again is ever-looming.
I agree with everything you said and don’t have much more to add. Just that I’m grateful you (and I) aren’t dealing with homelessness at this point in time. It sounds like you have more of an emergency fund than I do (though I’m trying!) This whole country is pay-to-play and if we lose, we just fall to the bottom without any support. Hell, even looking for low-income housing is a massive task in and of itself. Many of us have to literally win a lottery in this country in order to have a home.
Yep yep yep.
People who’ve never been homeless, they don’t understand this country.
Its that simple.
You’re not a real person anymore, you’re garbage that talks for some reason, has the gall to make eye contact for some reason.
And anyone can become homeless rather quickly, if they have a run of sufficiently bad luck, untrusthworthy friends/family, just are the wrong skin color or sexual orientation, etc.
Anybody who has not experienced it is fucking delusional about what this country really is, and I mean that absolutely, doesn’t matter what your ideology or day job is.
But yeah, I had to move halfway across the country, via Greyhound, to find a place to live.
Its not impossible to do this on SSDI alone (I was very seriously injured in my run of homelessness), I’ve managed to do it, but… its extremely difficult.
There were many days I was sure would be my last.
Saw a lot of people die.
Thats my American experience: No one cares, fuck you, die.
Glad you’ve survived it as well, at least thus far.