Ive been saving change for 10 years, have no idea how much I have. I have less and less change though because I've usually used my debit card.
We sometimes have money in the bank, but at other times we don't. We might get a contract that pays very well for a year, then things will dry up for a while. Being semi-retired, we don't hunt for work like we used to, although I suppose it would still be a good idea.
My thinking was that most companies are now offering 401k plans so I would think most people with lobs would have some savings in their account. Plus a lot of the population is older retired people who don't spend as much as younger folks raising kids. They should have some savings. I remember well being young and raising kids, I can understand those in that category not having any savings. It seems Americans in general just don't save as much as folks in most other countries. Maybe we depend too much on the government to take care of us.
Many grandparents are raising their grandchildren, and in most cases are babysitting them for nothing. For many seniors the golden years aren't so golden. The younger ones are holding only mediocre jobs. They miss out on the fun things with their kids. The seniors had a better affordable wage then their kids right now
Generally a person has to make a descent wage to save and/or contribute to a 401K. When working in warehousing and making in-between $9 and $10.50 per hour, there was no real way I could save. During those years, I drove older vehicles that needed "above average" vehicle repairs. I rented a room in a house, had a Pager instead of a phone and used most "left over" money for stable fee for a horse. My career for years was in warehousing, shipping/receiving and stockroom..........definitely not the best paying jobs. I tried taking on a part-time job, along with my full-time job, but it just didn't work out. I had energy, just not that much! Having no college degree and/or certification didn't help my job situation, let alone my salary. Heck, I had to really stretch my weekly pay check to take a lady out for a movie or dinner. At one time, I was able to put some money away, but that's because I went Exempt on my Federal and State Taxes. Got a very nice paycheck each week, but some years later, had to pay a partial of the tax I ended up owing. Today, people have to be in a pretty high paying career in order to save anything. But, a nice trip to Disney World for the family, can sure wipe out some of that savings. Employed people want to take vacations and vacations can sure cost.
There may be companies offering 401k plans, but there are also fewer companies offering any jobs at all and, at an age when people of our generation were beginning to move up in their career paths, far too many people are having to work two part-time jobs, neither of which offer benefits, in order to pay the bills. It is no longer the norm for someone to find work with good company, and to work there until retirement.
I think I have posted about my savings for 15 years which I counted last year before Christmas. It amounted to 70k pesos which is about $1,200. But that savings in my cabinet included money bills which I intentionally kept. For the next 10 years I have been saving again.
I grew up amongst a majority of folks who had as adults survived, one way or another, the Great Depression. As the economic collapse began and became more and more intense, in 1930 and on, until the late 1930s, many families experienced a complete wiping out of their savings, those having been "invested" in promised "high interest" notes, bonds, debentures, and the like. My Parents lost much of the savings they had managed to accumulate because they bought "Gold Bonds", issued by an Ethnic organization related to their forebears, through the "Czechoslovak Society of America", CSA. CSA was Godly to these folks. It represented a way by which these foreign-born people, new to America's ways, could continue to invest in savings as they had before they came to America. No doubt, CSA took a "beating". My Mother spotted an ad somewhere, by a Doctor in Wisconsin, offering to buy CSA bonds, at about 1/10 their face value. Several thousand dollars invested, they got back a few hundred. This experience on the part of my Parents, replicated thousands of times back then, explains why those early European-born Americans came to despise banks and the general economic system. Frank