I’ve been working to meet a lot of deadlines in my day life recently. I’ll have exciting news soon. But for now, the bad news.
The National Bureau of Economic Research in 2012 found that half of seniors die owning less than $10,000 in assets. According to the Federal Reserve in 2016, 23% of Americans older than 75 have a mortgage and 26% have credit card debt, a 159% increase from 1989.
Finally, an estimate in 2018 from the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that in the face of rising interest rates, our annual national debt interest payment will balloon to nearly 1 TRILLION dollars per year within 10 years and take up 3.3% of the economy (GDP), which will be the highest on record. This means we will more on interest on the debt than Medicaid by 2021 and national defense by 2024.
The Trump tax cuts are just another trip to the candy store for us to buy things we can’t afford. We want to feel better now, so we get immediate gratification and rack up debt we’ll never pay back. Healthcare costs don’t explain all of this, but they will continue to be the single biggest expense in the federal budget.
We’re broke in our personal lives and we’re becoming broke as a country. Surely we can do better.
Ummm, don’t you mean “the Trump tax cuts are just another trip to the candy store” for rich people and corporations? Comparatively little goes to ordinary people and that phases out. Don’t see any “candy store” in my check. And they then want to use the ballooning deficit (that they created) to “justify” cuts to Social Security, food stamps, Meals on Wheels, Medicaid, Medicare, etc. (the things that DO create security for older and other people).
Solutions have to be more than personal; yet all the while, on a personal level, we each have to navigate the environment that encourages overconsumption as well as impunity by “financial services” corporations to rob people blind. For someone who has kids, one of the best books of advice to give them is a book Elizabeth Warren and her daughter wrote a long time ago, All Your Worth (https://smile.amazon.com/All-Your-Worth-Ultimate-Lifetime/dp/0743269888/ref=sr_1_1). A great deal of good sense, as also is (for those who are married) their The Two-Income Trap. If a young person absorbs these, they can manage better than most to dodge the usual life course.
I met a young, Hispanic Carmax salesman this year (while car-shopping) who had lived very conservatively and spent only his income while they used his wife’s to pay off her student loans. Now that the couple had done that, they were buying a house but planned to continue to live on his income I think to save or something. It was very heartening to meet someone so prudent. (He also had declined a promotion to another Carmax elsewhere to stay in this area close to his family and parents. Good sense of values.)
The student loan thing means people start life with a “mortgage.” That’s bad.
There used to be legal limits to usury enshrined in Texas laws. Now that the corporations own the Congress, all bets are off and predation is federally encouraged. A damn shame.
Don’t worry, on your way out the financial predators will offer you a “reverse mortgage” so they can get you coming and going.