And people are so clueless about inflation or the Fed. Add to that the braindead media pumping out articles about how high inflation is a good thing or the economy is actually great but we are too stupid to see it.
I know a few people just like that younger than me. They will never be able to afford a house, they are so poor, will have roommates forever, blah, blah, blah. Yet they always have expensive coffee drinks, food delivery, every streaming service, etc.
Cooking is something I really started putting effort in to about six months ago. It became fun, and I don't devote a lot of time because I generally prep all my meals on Sunday and store the raw prepped ingredients to be actually cooked on demand. I cook about 80% of my meals and I eat like royalty. Bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee almost every morning. Hot fresh meals every meal, less the occasional sandwich to work. Fine ingredients for everything and I've really been pushing myself to learn more. Once I got into a groove, most of the work is a couple hours every Sunday and 15mins per meal. Not only has my health gone way up (I feel a ton different), but even buying ingredients with zero concern for buying low-cost I still spend less on food. Even something like coffee, I can randomly splurge on a $25 bag of coffee just because I want to, because I still spend less than a couple bucks a cup, good luck doing that at a coffee shop.
As for holidays, I cut my budget on that and started saving the difference. I still do something "nice" every couple years, but the rest of the time I've had nearly as much fun with cheap non-pretentious short trips to do things with friends and family.
It's easy to say "if only you didn't buy that latte" but you're passing over the fact that housing and food costs in general are rising at an insanely high rate. You can only make so many cuts and soon nobody will be able to catch up
You are right and I have debt I’m paying off due to stupid decisions when I was younger. Have a good job but also do surveys on the side to make a little extra and I house sit in the summer so that is some extra cash as well. But I’ve learned the hard way how quickly eating out can add up. Thankfully I do a hybrid at work so I only have to be in the office twice a week so that saves on gas. You are right, there are things that can be done
I'm not going to pull a Hasan Piker or anything like that when it comes to social commentary
Yeah, cause he claims he lives on a basic necessity budget. That guy is the epitome of a grifter and hypocrite. Not to mention he's literally dumb as fuck.
Let me tell you, if I told people what I have available to me in liquid assets, they'd call me rich. I may have had some money invested in my old bank accounts that was from my parents helping me learn saving money, but st this point, I'd say all my money is my own. Most of my early gains come from trusting my father to invest my money in the stock market. He got in early on things that went up in value 1000% over the course of two decades.
I am debt-free, own my house and car, don't live by the paycheck... and my income is probably what people would still call poverty-level these days ($35k before taxes)
I blame debt for a lot of people in my age group that have trouble. When I looked around at my peers in my 20s and a bit of my 30s it's what I always saw. Tons of student loans. Needing a new fancy "cool" car at 18-20. Traveling all over on credit. They never could wait for anything. Meanwhile, I paid for college by working full time and for the most part giving the school checks every semester. It took me six years to get a "4-year" degree, but I walked away not owing a penny. I bought a car for $3,000 cash I'd saved two months after I graduated high school. It was in really nice shape, but wasn't trendy and modern. It was also damn comfortable and got me where I needed to be every time. I drove that until I was 25. I didn't really travel much until I was nearly 30, and even then it's not a huge amount I spend.
The thing is, everyone looks at me now like I'm rich, but most of the people around me who think that have more income than me or at the very least think I make a lot more than I do. Yeah, I have nice stuff, and yeah, I don't stress about money at all, because I don't have to. I only have mortgage debt, I could get rid of that if I wanted without too much pain. Car titles are on hand and clear and will be even though I'm looking at buying something else soon. I paid my dues the hard and patient way, when they were instead paying the bankers.
Nothing but the mortgage for debt is great. I really rushed my mortgage plan as fast as I could, because the interest accounts for so goddamn much of the repayment. Made it a 30-year plan just to be sure my own monthly budget could handle it, then made large lump-sum deposits whenever I had a good amount available.
Yeah, I could work on getting rid of the mortgage, but it's so small and so low interest I just don't bother.
I remember with cars though, when I first got a car loan at 25. I started looking at the interest and wondering why the hell I wanted to give that to the bank. So I paid it off pretty quick. My plan since I was young-20s was always to improve and never go backwards. It started really simple. One example, I realized that insurance could be had cheaper if I paid for the policy in a full lump sum. That next policy term, I paid the policy and then saved the money to pay in full for the next one. Now I'm done, I save for the future one every term and pay it in full. That's let's say $50 a year I've kept in my pocket. I did the same thing with cars. After I paid that loan off, I saved a reduced amount from the payment for 5 years while I used the car I had. Then the next car I just bought and now the banker doesn't get his cut.
Awesome! My parents talked to me about saving and investing but I didn’t listen until my late 30s. So better late than never. My goal is to be debt free within 3 years. Congrats
Oh, Inflation can be a very good thing... if, say, you're borrowing a shit-ton of money on a fixed-rate lone, or are paying off on a fixed-rate mortgage.
Not something most people are casually going to be doing.
I've found over the years that financial stuff isn't very intuitive, even to very smart people.
Fun little aside, apparently it's a bit of a stereotype that doctors are very bad with money. Clearly, I need to work on getting a Dr Sugar Momma to make sure she doesn't spend herself into the poor-house. (I would never do this. This is horrible advise.)
I think there is some historical evidence people will start to care about the Fed when inflation gets high enough. I believe some drastic actions were taken in the 70s to preserve the system... It didn't lead exactly to scrutiny on the Fed -- I guess they dodged it -- but there was enough discontent to motivate the government to do something. Which is interesting because the Fed is not a part of the government.
Which is interesting because the Fed is not a part of the government.
The Federal Reserve was created by the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, all branch banks have .gov websites, and the Board of Governors are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
But sure, the Federal Reserve is totally a private bank and not part of the government.
I can barely cover a $500 emergency. I just had one. Bad wheel bearings on my old truck.
I got er done but I had to eat peanut butter sandwiches for a week or two after that.
Everything has gone insanely expensive but pay isn't going with it. In 4-5 years my mortgage shot up $500 a month due to the taxes and insurance in this retarded housing market. I'm not making $500 a month more in those 4-5 years, close, but the mortgage inflation has it beat just a bit.
Now factor in the inflation everywhere else, and my pay has NOT gone up enough to compensate.
I'm luckier than a lot of people, if the worst thing happened and I couldn't afford to live alone in my home anymore I could pick up a friend as a roommate, or just sell my shit and move back home to my parents home and build something on their property with the profits of selling the house.
Insurance is so heavily regulated as to be a form of taxation, in my opinion. Where it is not literally run by the government. Therefore, I think they are taxing people and hiding it somewhat.
Not really shocking the world has seen a massive power and wealth transfer thanks to Covid. I have a doctorate and I still probably couldn’t afford a $500 emergency (student loans, 2 kids, a sick wife, etc.).
War is probably on the horizon. The only difference is if it’s going to be Civil or international
It probably will be, if they start a world War when way too much of the country denies that the federal government is legitimate, in a country where the populace has the right to own guns.
The defining human aspect of the past 500 years is I think the diffusion of people around the world, rather than anything we've discovered, and it's going terribly.
It started out with the Spanish somewhat-accidentally somewhat-on-purpose wiping out most of the humans that had been in the New World, replacing them, and then it basically continued in that vein.
Everyone is mad about it, from the people who were colonized to the villagers back in Europe now experiencing reflux from those colonies.
This is just commie bullshit. Those “Americans can’t afford a $500 emergency” studies only look to see if Americans have an extra $500 in their checking account. They don’t look at savings accounts, or CDs, or Money Market accounts, or brokerage accounts.
With high inflation you don’t want lots of money in a non interest bearing account.
You can write checks or debit most Money Market accounts. Savings can be transferred instantly. Brokerage accounts you can get at within a day. Worst case, if you need a couple of business days, you charge it an pay it back by the end of the month.
Restricting it to "checking only" is beyond dishonest.
Money market accounts require a minimum balance and have penalties for liquidation, savings has withdrawal limits, and brokerage account liquidations come with a massive loss. They all bite you in the ass for pulling out a lot of money in a pinch, otherwise checking accounts would already have all the features of them. Credit card debt is already at an all time high and credit payments are at an all time low. What percentage of people making 60k-100k do you think have 1 out of those 3 let alone 2? 30%? How many have already had to liquidate those accounts to keep up with costs going up? You have to make 12k more a year on average to match pre covid levels.
You're not wrong about it being more complicated, but we're also talking about an emergency. Getting $500 from a savings account in an emergency even if you're at monthly transaction limit is going to cost you maybe $10 in fees. The premise is "can't cover a $500 emergency," not "has $500 sitting in a non-interest bearing checking account."
FYI: Federal Regulation D's requirements were removed in 2020. Banks aren't required to limit monthly "convenience transactions" anymore. Though plenty of them still pretend it's required so they can charge fees.
brokerage account liquidations come with a massive loss
Where'd you pull that out of? They come with some tax consequences of course but where are these "massive losses" coming from? Are you counting decades of future earnings against them? If you are, leaving the $500 in checking was already a "massive loss."
I'm not trying to say people are in great financial shape. But going from that kind of question surveyed to this kind of headline would be dishonest. The honest researched would ask something like, "could you deal with a $500 emergency without incurring debt."
I'm not trying to say people are in great financial shape. But going from the that kind of question surveyed to the headline is dishonest.
The survey wasn’t a “checking only” survey, making that connotation in the first place is dishonest, doubling down on it is stupid.
Getting $500 from a savings account in an emergency even if you're at monthly transaction limit is going to cost you maybe $10 in fees. The premise is "can't cover a $500 emergency," not "has $500 sitting in a non-interest bearing checking account.”
Again, not what the survey said. If said can you pay 500 tomorrow, not do you have 500 in your checking, you’re the one making claims that is not in the survey.
FYI: Federal Regulation D's requirements were removed in 2020. Banks aren't required to limit monthly "convenience transactions" anymore. Though plenty of them still pretend it's required so they can charge fees.
Find me a bank that lets people pull from their savings constantly, they’re eating their shirt if they do. Just because the fed stopped requiring it means absolutely nothing, it’s still in practice across the board.
Where'd you pull that out of? They come with some tax consequences of course but where are these "massive losses" coming from? Are you counting decades of future earnings against them? If you are, leaving the $500 in checking was already a "massive loss."
Again, show me where in the survey it said checking only, you’re going off what the dumbass said above, not what’s actually in the survey…
Find me a bank that lets people pull from their savings constantly,
"Emergency" now means "constantly." Okay.
Again, show me where in the survey it said checking only
Me: "Why do you think withdrawing money from a brokerage account is a massive loss?"
You: "But what was the question in this survey?!"
Did you quote the wrong thing or are just that obvious at dodging questions?
Edit: You want to discuss what the question was in this particular case, you can go track down the survey the guy in video was discussing (unsourced). Until someone shows me otherwise, I'm going to assume "researchers" and "journalists" are being dishonest as we've all come to expect.
You made a non argument because the fed changed a rule but bank practices stay the same.
Me: "Why do you think withdrawing money from a brokerage account is a massive loss?"
You: "But what was the question in this survey?!"
Did you quote the wrong thing or are just that obvious at dodging questions?
I’m sorry, are we pretending 401ks don’t have penalties for withdrawals now? What happens to the match when you withdraw early? You keep making non arguments that have zero to do with the survey.
Edit: You want to discuss what the question was in this particular case, you can go track down whatever the guy in video was discussing (unsourced). Until someone shows me otherwise, I'm going to assume "researchers" are being dishonest.
Sooo you didn’t watch the video… he was reading the questions verbatim.
Yeah I've seen that in articles before. "Oh no Americans have no money in checking!" I keep very little in checking by design. It's a transactional account. Income comes in, every dollar has a place it belongs before it even shows up. I keep a bit of cash in the house.
What emergency is going to come up that it can't be covered by the cash, a charge card, or wait a couple business days? I can't think of anything.
And the globohomo's solution is more illegals, more taxes, policies that increase cost of living (ie fucking with our energy independence) and demoralization.
Yet banks are giving out nice loans to minorities due to equity while whites have to foot the bill for most of it.
That expensive hospital bill? You’re also paying for illegals and nogs to come in and get free health care.
My insurance has pretty much doubled the past two years and we all know what needed to be paid for in BLM riots.
Damn. I am richer than I thought. Still cannot afford a house though. Not because I want to buy one of those McMansions either. In this crazy housing market all the people selling little cottages want cash.
Even when I was doing lower end jobs, 500 wasn't that much. Like, it'd hurt to lose, but it would be there to lose. Don't drink, no drugs, make your own food, avoid owning a car if you can swing it, and the money will add up.
Its because it is. These "studies" are always full of wild parameters and requirements that make no sense unless you are trying to force a certain result.
Like, inflation is bad and the economy is really bad. But people are also so retardedly hedonistic they spend themselves into poverty and then blame it on everyone else. Most people could probably afford most of their emergencies if they just stopped smoking pot or taking their "prescription" meds they claim to need.
And people are so clueless about inflation or the Fed. Add to that the braindead media pumping out articles about how high inflation is a good thing or the economy is actually great but we are too stupid to see it.
I know a few people just like that younger than me. They will never be able to afford a house, they are so poor, will have roommates forever, blah, blah, blah. Yet they always have expensive coffee drinks, food delivery, every streaming service, etc.
Cooking is something I really started putting effort in to about six months ago. It became fun, and I don't devote a lot of time because I generally prep all my meals on Sunday and store the raw prepped ingredients to be actually cooked on demand. I cook about 80% of my meals and I eat like royalty. Bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee almost every morning. Hot fresh meals every meal, less the occasional sandwich to work. Fine ingredients for everything and I've really been pushing myself to learn more. Once I got into a groove, most of the work is a couple hours every Sunday and 15mins per meal. Not only has my health gone way up (I feel a ton different), but even buying ingredients with zero concern for buying low-cost I still spend less on food. Even something like coffee, I can randomly splurge on a $25 bag of coffee just because I want to, because I still spend less than a couple bucks a cup, good luck doing that at a coffee shop.
As for holidays, I cut my budget on that and started saving the difference. I still do something "nice" every couple years, but the rest of the time I've had nearly as much fun with cheap non-pretentious short trips to do things with friends and family.
It's easy to say "if only you didn't buy that latte" but you're passing over the fact that housing and food costs in general are rising at an insanely high rate. You can only make so many cuts and soon nobody will be able to catch up
You are right and I have debt I’m paying off due to stupid decisions when I was younger. Have a good job but also do surveys on the side to make a little extra and I house sit in the summer so that is some extra cash as well. But I’ve learned the hard way how quickly eating out can add up. Thankfully I do a hybrid at work so I only have to be in the office twice a week so that saves on gas. You are right, there are things that can be done
Yeah, cause he claims he lives on a basic necessity budget. That guy is the epitome of a grifter and hypocrite. Not to mention he's literally dumb as fuck.
A Porshe Taycan is a basic necessity, chud.
Let me tell you, if I told people what I have available to me in liquid assets, they'd call me rich. I may have had some money invested in my old bank accounts that was from my parents helping me learn saving money, but st this point, I'd say all my money is my own. Most of my early gains come from trusting my father to invest my money in the stock market. He got in early on things that went up in value 1000% over the course of two decades.
I am debt-free, own my house and car, don't live by the paycheck... and my income is probably what people would still call poverty-level these days ($35k before taxes)
I blame debt for a lot of people in my age group that have trouble. When I looked around at my peers in my 20s and a bit of my 30s it's what I always saw. Tons of student loans. Needing a new fancy "cool" car at 18-20. Traveling all over on credit. They never could wait for anything. Meanwhile, I paid for college by working full time and for the most part giving the school checks every semester. It took me six years to get a "4-year" degree, but I walked away not owing a penny. I bought a car for $3,000 cash I'd saved two months after I graduated high school. It was in really nice shape, but wasn't trendy and modern. It was also damn comfortable and got me where I needed to be every time. I drove that until I was 25. I didn't really travel much until I was nearly 30, and even then it's not a huge amount I spend.
The thing is, everyone looks at me now like I'm rich, but most of the people around me who think that have more income than me or at the very least think I make a lot more than I do. Yeah, I have nice stuff, and yeah, I don't stress about money at all, because I don't have to. I only have mortgage debt, I could get rid of that if I wanted without too much pain. Car titles are on hand and clear and will be even though I'm looking at buying something else soon. I paid my dues the hard and patient way, when they were instead paying the bankers.
Nothing but the mortgage for debt is great. I really rushed my mortgage plan as fast as I could, because the interest accounts for so goddamn much of the repayment. Made it a 30-year plan just to be sure my own monthly budget could handle it, then made large lump-sum deposits whenever I had a good amount available.
Yeah, I could work on getting rid of the mortgage, but it's so small and so low interest I just don't bother.
I remember with cars though, when I first got a car loan at 25. I started looking at the interest and wondering why the hell I wanted to give that to the bank. So I paid it off pretty quick. My plan since I was young-20s was always to improve and never go backwards. It started really simple. One example, I realized that insurance could be had cheaper if I paid for the policy in a full lump sum. That next policy term, I paid the policy and then saved the money to pay in full for the next one. Now I'm done, I save for the future one every term and pay it in full. That's let's say $50 a year I've kept in my pocket. I did the same thing with cars. After I paid that loan off, I saved a reduced amount from the payment for 5 years while I used the car I had. Then the next car I just bought and now the banker doesn't get his cut.
Making sure the banker doesn't get his cut is a great motivator to avoid debt. Too bad most people only see everything in monthly payments.
Awesome! My parents talked to me about saving and investing but I didn’t listen until my late 30s. So better late than never. My goal is to be debt free within 3 years. Congrats
Do you have a wife,girlfriend or a kid? Cause that's fucking crazy
Oh, Inflation can be a very good thing... if, say, you're borrowing a shit-ton of money on a fixed-rate lone, or are paying off on a fixed-rate mortgage.
Not something most people are casually going to be doing.
I've found over the years that financial stuff isn't very intuitive, even to very smart people.
Fun little aside, apparently it's a bit of a stereotype that doctors are very bad with money. Clearly, I need to work on getting a Dr Sugar Momma to make sure she doesn't spend herself into the poor-house. (I would never do this. This is horrible advise.)
I think there is some historical evidence people will start to care about the Fed when inflation gets high enough. I believe some drastic actions were taken in the 70s to preserve the system... It didn't lead exactly to scrutiny on the Fed -- I guess they dodged it -- but there was enough discontent to motivate the government to do something. Which is interesting because the Fed is not a part of the government.
The Federal Reserve was created by the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, all branch banks have .gov websites, and the Board of Governors are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
But sure, the Federal Reserve is totally a private bank and not part of the government.
Who owns it?
Janet Yellen.
I can barely cover a $500 emergency. I just had one. Bad wheel bearings on my old truck.
I got er done but I had to eat peanut butter sandwiches for a week or two after that.
Everything has gone insanely expensive but pay isn't going with it. In 4-5 years my mortgage shot up $500 a month due to the taxes and insurance in this retarded housing market. I'm not making $500 a month more in those 4-5 years, close, but the mortgage inflation has it beat just a bit.
Now factor in the inflation everywhere else, and my pay has NOT gone up enough to compensate.
I'm luckier than a lot of people, if the worst thing happened and I couldn't afford to live alone in my home anymore I could pick up a friend as a roommate, or just sell my shit and move back home to my parents home and build something on their property with the profits of selling the house.
Most people don't have those luxuries tho.
Insurance is so heavily regulated as to be a form of taxation, in my opinion. Where it is not literally run by the government. Therefore, I think they are taxing people and hiding it somewhat.
Not really shocking the world has seen a massive power and wealth transfer thanks to Covid. I have a doctorate and I still probably couldn’t afford a $500 emergency (student loans, 2 kids, a sick wife, etc.).
War is probably on the horizon. The only difference is if it’s going to be Civil or international
Why not both?
It probably will be, if they start a world War when way too much of the country denies that the federal government is legitimate, in a country where the populace has the right to own guns.
I've been calling it the World Civil War among my friends.
The defining human aspect of the past 500 years is I think the diffusion of people around the world, rather than anything we've discovered, and it's going terribly.
It started out with the Spanish somewhat-accidentally somewhat-on-purpose wiping out most of the humans that had been in the New World, replacing them, and then it basically continued in that vein.
Everyone is mad about it, from the people who were colonized to the villagers back in Europe now experiencing reflux from those colonies.
Lockdown and furlough were never, ever going to be a cost free solution. We're all paying the cost of those now.
Don't worry folks, we'll get you taken care of. All you have to do is take this mark (digital ID) and eeeevvverything will be fine.
This is just commie bullshit. Those “Americans can’t afford a $500 emergency” studies only look to see if Americans have an extra $500 in their checking account. They don’t look at savings accounts, or CDs, or Money Market accounts, or brokerage accounts.
With high inflation you don’t want lots of money in a non interest bearing account.
You mean assets that can’t be liquidated quickly in an emergency?
You can write checks or debit most Money Market accounts. Savings can be transferred instantly. Brokerage accounts you can get at within a day. Worst case, if you need a couple of business days, you charge it an pay it back by the end of the month.
Restricting it to "checking only" is beyond dishonest.
Money market accounts require a minimum balance and have penalties for liquidation, savings has withdrawal limits, and brokerage account liquidations come with a massive loss. They all bite you in the ass for pulling out a lot of money in a pinch, otherwise checking accounts would already have all the features of them. Credit card debt is already at an all time high and credit payments are at an all time low. What percentage of people making 60k-100k do you think have 1 out of those 3 let alone 2? 30%? How many have already had to liquidate those accounts to keep up with costs going up? You have to make 12k more a year on average to match pre covid levels.
You're not wrong about it being more complicated, but we're also talking about an emergency. Getting $500 from a savings account in an emergency even if you're at monthly transaction limit is going to cost you maybe $10 in fees. The premise is "can't cover a $500 emergency," not "has $500 sitting in a non-interest bearing checking account."
FYI: Federal Regulation D's requirements were removed in 2020. Banks aren't required to limit monthly "convenience transactions" anymore. Though plenty of them still pretend it's required so they can charge fees.
Where'd you pull that out of? They come with some tax consequences of course but where are these "massive losses" coming from? Are you counting decades of future earnings against them? If you are, leaving the $500 in checking was already a "massive loss."
I'm not trying to say people are in great financial shape. But going from that kind of question surveyed to this kind of headline would be dishonest. The honest researched would ask something like, "could you deal with a $500 emergency without incurring debt."
The survey wasn’t a “checking only” survey, making that connotation in the first place is dishonest, doubling down on it is stupid.
Again, not what the survey said. If said can you pay 500 tomorrow, not do you have 500 in your checking, you’re the one making claims that is not in the survey.
Find me a bank that lets people pull from their savings constantly, they’re eating their shirt if they do. Just because the fed stopped requiring it means absolutely nothing, it’s still in practice across the board.
Again, show me where in the survey it said checking only, you’re going off what the dumbass said above, not what’s actually in the survey…
"Emergency" now means "constantly." Okay.
Me: "Why do you think withdrawing money from a brokerage account is a massive loss?"
You: "But what was the question in this survey?!"
Did you quote the wrong thing or are just that obvious at dodging questions?
Edit: You want to discuss what the question was in this particular case, you can go track down the survey the guy in video was discussing (unsourced). Until someone shows me otherwise, I'm going to assume "researchers" and "journalists" are being dishonest as we've all come to expect.
You made a non argument because the fed changed a rule but bank practices stay the same.
I’m sorry, are we pretending 401ks don’t have penalties for withdrawals now? What happens to the match when you withdraw early? You keep making non arguments that have zero to do with the survey.
Sooo you didn’t watch the video… he was reading the questions verbatim.
Yeah I've seen that in articles before. "Oh no Americans have no money in checking!" I keep very little in checking by design. It's a transactional account. Income comes in, every dollar has a place it belongs before it even shows up. I keep a bit of cash in the house.
What emergency is going to come up that it can't be covered by the cash, a charge card, or wait a couple business days? I can't think of anything.
And the globohomo's solution is more illegals, more taxes, policies that increase cost of living (ie fucking with our energy independence) and demoralization.
Yet banks are giving out nice loans to minorities due to equity while whites have to foot the bill for most of it. That expensive hospital bill? You’re also paying for illegals and nogs to come in and get free health care. My insurance has pretty much doubled the past two years and we all know what needed to be paid for in BLM riots.
Damn. I am richer than I thought. Still cannot afford a house though. Not because I want to buy one of those McMansions either. In this crazy housing market all the people selling little cottages want cash.
That just seems odd.
Even when I was doing lower end jobs, 500 wasn't that much. Like, it'd hurt to lose, but it would be there to lose. Don't drink, no drugs, make your own food, avoid owning a car if you can swing it, and the money will add up.
Its because it is. These "studies" are always full of wild parameters and requirements that make no sense unless you are trying to force a certain result.
Like, inflation is bad and the economy is really bad. But people are also so retardedly hedonistic they spend themselves into poverty and then blame it on everyone else. Most people could probably afford most of their emergencies if they just stopped smoking pot or taking their "prescription" meds they claim to need.