7 in 10 Americans have less than $1,000 in savings

[davidn3600]

The U.S. is often referred to as the land of economic opportunity. Apparently, it's also the land of consumption and "spend everything you've got."

We don't have to look far for confirmation that Americans are generally poor savers. Every month the St. Louis Federal Reserve releases data on personal household savings rates. In July 2016, the personal savings rate was just 5.7%. Comparatively, personal savings rates in the U.S. 50 years ago were double where they are today, and nearly all developed countries have a higher personal savings rate than the United States. In other words, Americans are saving less of their income than they should be — the recommendation is to save between 10% and 15% of your annual income — and they're being forced to do more with less in terms of investing.

owever, new data emerged this week from personal-finance news website GoBankingRates that shows just how dire Americans' savings habits really are.

Last year, GoBankingRates surveyed more than 5,000 Americans only to uncover that 62% of them had less than $1,000 in savings. Last month GoBankingRates again posed the question to Americans of how much they had in their savings account, only this time it asked 7,052 people. The result? Nearly seven in 10 Americans (69%) had less than $1,000 in their savings account.

Breaking the survey data down a bit further, we find that 34% of Americans don't have a dime in their savings account, while another 35% have less than $1,000. Of the remaining survey-takers, 11% have between $1,000 and $4,999, 4% have between $5,000 and $9,999, and 15% have more than $10,000.

Furthermore, even though lower-income adults struggle with saving money more than middle- and upper-income folks, no income group did particularly well. Some 29% of adults earning more than $150,000 a year, and 44% making between $100,000 and $149,999, had less than $1,000 in savings. Comparatively, 73% of the lowest income adults (those earnings $24,999 or less annually) had less than $1,000 in their savings account.

There was even minimal difference between multiple generations of Americans. From seniors aged 65 and up to young millennials aged 18 to 24, between 62% and 72% of Americans had less than $1,000 in a savings account.

http://www.11alive.com/money/nearly-7-in-10-americans-have-less-than-1000-in-savings/332330224

[Agschmid]

1. Wow.

[whatthehey]

2. May not be the reason to panic as intended

many in the upper and middle incomes at least will have plenty of money in investments but not in savings. And why should they, when savings pay a 10th of a percent or so interest? It makes no sense to keep your money in basic savings when inflation is higher than the interest you get.

[teenagebambam]

3. Lost a house and all my savings

during the housing crisis. Have never recovered and likely never will. I'm 50, and this year is the first year that I will make more income than I made in 2006. Also the first year since 2014 that I will be making retirement contribution. I have JUST over $1000 in savings. Like, maybe 3 dollars over.

[socialist_n_TN]

6. Yeah apparently capitalism needed our savings back too........

So they laid my wife off at 60 and me at 64. We went through what my wife had in a couple of years (she's always made more than me) and mine in about six months. No work for old folks.

[Doreen]

4. Does not suprise me.

There is a class that nobody ever mentions because they are to busy worrying about the middle class. It is called the "working poor" and that is what these banks are seeing.

[Warpy]

5. Low interest rates, high inflation

Most people buy now because they know tomorrow it'll cost another 10% as much. A dollar saved is a dollar worth 75 cents in a few years. Saving in this country has been punished for a very long time but never more so since the Fed, in its infinite wisdom, lowered the prime rate to zero and is talking about paying the banks to borrow money, thus making it a negative rate.

Having said that, I can tell y'all I was a saver instead of a spender and allergic to debt, things that allowed me to survive when my health went sour again and I had to live off savings. I knew my health would always suck, it was a great motivator.

However, I completely understand people who spend everything they've got and some they don't have already on the latest tchotchke. The system is tilted heavily against savers and it doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon.

[Sherman A1]

9. Precisely

The system is tilted against savers and it's all about buy more and more and more. Stagnate wages have been a huge contributing factor to this situation as costs rise and people lose buying power staying in jobs that provide a decrease in real wages just to keep their health insurance.

[marybourg]

8. I haven't had a "savings account" since the 1980's.

So I guess I'm not a saver. But I do have an IRA, as does my spouse. I also have a mutual fund account with Vanguard, a brokerage account (where I have mutual fund-like ETFs) at Schwab, CD's at a local bank and a Money Market fund at another, in addition to a checking account, of course. In fact, I'm pretty comfortably off, financially, but I have NO savings account at all. Many, many people have tax-deferred 401-K's or 403b's with tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars accumulated. But no "savings account". Something is very wrong with this story,

[davidn3600]

10. I dont know that this is referring to retirement or net worth necessarily

I think it's more about personal budgeting. People don't have very much savings that they can immediately tap into in the event of emergency.

Americans tend to have much of their wealth tied up in assets and equity and 401k accounts. But those are not easy to get access, and it can be expensive to access that money.

But there is also a large number of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. That's been known for a long time.

[Major Nikon]

11. It says savings account, specifically

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that nobody is keeping money in a passbook savings account. I certainly don't. I do have money in investment accounts I can access within 2 business days, overdraft protection on my two different checking accounts, and a credit card. There are all sorts of ways to have instant access to cash without a passbook savings account which pays almost nothing in interest.