It's What I've Been Doing All Along

emeraldkity4
Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:42:16 +0000

saying that 9 out of 10 debt is the consumers " fault" is like saying 9 out of 10 divorces/accidents could be prevented.

It has barely any grounding in reality.

Wages have stagnated while costs have been rising.
Families whose income that covered expenses 20 years ago,couldn’t have foreseen NAFTA and outsourcing of jobs & whole industries. The escalation of housing costs and the increase of companies that subcontract part time workers instead of hiring them full time. ( and lay them off before they are retirement age)



Even as the economy was growing, income stagnated last year and the poverty rate rose, the Census Bureau reported today. This is the first time on record that household income has failed to increase for five straight years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/politics/30cnd-census.html
( note these prices are 10 years out of date)

Hundreds of thousands of Americans don’t meet the government’s definition of ‘poor,’ and yet they’re struggling to stay afloat without assistance, especially in areas where the economy is booming, such as Silicon Valley. Is the way we measure poverty outdated?..
a number of state and federal aid programs, including food stamps, school lunches, Medicaid and home energy assistance, use the federal poverty measure to determine eligibility – but that measure takes no account of regional variations in the cost of living. A family earning $20,000 a year in Choctaw County, Alabama is considered just as “poor” as one living in San Jose – even though the fair market rent of a two-bedroom apartment in Choctaw is $347 a month, as opposed to $1,139 in San Jose. In fact, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a person earning minimum wage would need to work 170 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment in San Jose (and there are only 168 hours in a week).

[High-Income Poverty](High-Income Poverty – Mother Jones)

Retirement is now a luxury and if you are in forced retirement because of job loss or medical issues you are SOL.

Nearly all Americans have felt the sting of inflation in recent months. But when you’re retired and your sole means of support is a fixed amount that arrives each month — from Social Security and, for the lucky ones, a pension — the pain is especially severe.

Until recently, many retirees had assumed they had enough income to retire on. That was before gas and food prices began racing out of control.

[Rising prices hammer seniors on fixed incomes - USATODAY.com](http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/retirement/2008-07-01-retiree-fixed-income_N.htm)