New Yorkers Finding It Difficult To Save - City Has An *Affordability* Crisis (Scott: refinancing)

[BugsyPal]

So says a new "affordability tool" brought to you by the man who wants to be the next mayor so badly he can taste it, Scott Stringer.


https://ny.curbed.com/2018/6/6/17433...stringer-index

[BPt111]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnYJxD2jd7k

[mathjak107]

there is no financial survey anymore and has not been one since 2010 with the census . no one really knows what anyone has .

the closest we get now is the ACS sends out a random sampling for americans to fill out .

it seems while all these little samplings say americans have no money , they seem to have a whole lot more than documented

[BugsyPal]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

there is no financial survey anymore and has not been one since 2010 with the census . no one really knows what anyone has .

the closest we get now is the ACS sends out a random sampling for americans to fill out .

it seems while all these little samplings say americans have no money , they seem to have a whole lot more than documented

IIRC what many Americans have is debt, lots of it and levels are rising again after tapering off in response to the huge fiscal/credit crisis.


Going back to the 1980's if not before the so called "middle class" lifestyle has been fueled by debt. Credit cards, loans, home refinancing, student loans, etc....


You see this in all those posts form those moaning about being passed over for "affordable housing" lotteries; upon closer examination their finances show high debt in relation to income. That means far too much was going on credit cards (and not being paid off in any significant way), which is how many New Yorker seem to live now a days.


It's one thing for people whose employment means paydays are irregular to use credit until money comes in (commission or draw, self employed waiting for customers to pay their bills, etc....).

[mathjak107]

most of these how much do we have articles are slanted and skewed and no one really knows what we all have . heck you could not even guess by a random sampling in my building what we all have .

there is a huge under ground economy going on as well and even many counted as poor have very nice under ground incomes.

if you take our savings rate which plummeted from the 6% range to the 2.50% range and the credit card debt levels vs income levels and apply it to the gdp we get a gdp of about 1.50% possible. that is actually 1/2 the gdp we have so already you see something does not add up .

all these how poor we all are articles usually have an agenda or point they are trying to attract readers with . the real truth is no one really knows what is in all our pockets.

you can see that with fidelity's retirement balances . they appear pretty pretty low acroos the board . but looking under the hood at the balances , you have those just starting out with little accumulated , you have those who contribute little , etc . but once you start to shape the numbers in to something more meaningful such as to to reflect those who are over 55 and contributing 1/2 max to max for at least 10 years , those balances look very different in comparison to what the numbers get diluted to when you have those saving little diluting them ..

in the end i pay no attention to all these how bad we all our doing articles . i prefer the how to do better articles than something that may not only be skewed but that there is nothing i personally can do about their situation other than what i do already ..