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After reading the article, it is clearly skewed toward people who are younger, and are living a “normal American life.” It is also geared toward a “recession”. We, the two of us in this household, and most others in this Club, are not “normal Americans.” You “Youngsters” need to balance your financial needs with a greater view toward the future when you may not have an income. Us “Oldsters” are in our future.
The two of us are retirees, mainly surviving on Social Security – which means Paycheck-to-Paycheck. Yes, there is some other income, but it would be rapidly depleted if we were to rely on it for our basic expenses.
I agree that young people (for me that means any one who is working and not nearing retirement) should be investing to build their retirement savings. However, knowing my family as I do, there is too much Paycheck-to-Paycheck happening. There is little liquid savings, and too much credit card debt. That needs to be remedied, for my daughter’s family, with a different attitude toward purchases. They live too much in the “now” while still not being extravagant.
For us oldsters, it does not make sense to start or increase our investing in long-term financial projects. We will not see the rewards. We, personally, do NOT have a credit card; we use a debit card and do not carry a lot of cash with us. We have a savings account, attached to our checking account, with enough for one month and it covers possible overdrafts for unexpected items or large purchases. We also have a HELOC which can be used for the purchase of large items for the house.
However, at home, I stash money whenever we can; plus some in the car for an emergency purchase. We live in a small town, (3,000 people) and the bankers can identify us by our voices over the phone. There would not be enough cash money in that small bank to carry all of it’s clients through a month. If we needed cash, the bank would not have it. If there was an EMP, or other crisis, we could not get cash from the bank nor would we be able to use the electronic banking system (Debit/Credit Cards.)
I am trying to build up to over one month’s worth of cash in the house. We use the cash to pay local contractors for odd jobs. We use the cash when we travel. We are saving the cash for a time when, for whatever reason, there is none in the bank. You never know when, or for what reason, that may happen.
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With we, two of us, we use more cash than anything else. I find that using cash, makes me more aware of what I am spending and how much we have left for the rest of the month.
We live on Pensions, and Social Security, and with only one payment that is dedicated to a vehicle loan, we actually live very well on our little dab of income. We live this way for many reasons but one is that we have no children, nor do we have anyone to actually leave anything to, we just keep ourselves and don’t have to help others when they overspend as most of us as youngsters did. We have our funerals paid for, and the only thing we will be required to pay for, is the opening and closing of our graves. Our plots were bought by my FIL a long time ago, when their daughter passed right after birth.
I don’t use a debit card, had one, too much hassle for me to keep using and credit cards are used for our online purchases, but we pay them off every month before the bills are even in the mail. Pay as you go is what we call it. lol
I don’t see how the “youngsters” are going to survive in this world if the SHTF and they are caught with their pants down, which most of them will be. I have a few nieces who are young, and dumb, to me, but I do remember being there in that mode when I was their age. “I will never get Old!” that is what we always said, but alas, we are there and with our way of living, we should be very well preserved for our lives until and after the SHTF and the money in the banks is no longer available to most of us. We do loads of cash daily in our life and are so much happier for it, JMHO
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After the Obamacare healthcare debacle, we put ourselves on a very tight budget. It was tight there for about 2 years to get our savings back to where it should be, and we still have a little ways to go to get to 6 months of in the bank savings if something were to happen as to a loss of income.
BUT, we still put nearly 18% into our retirement accounts.
Did have a big expense in the new furnace, but we are already seeing the drastic improvement in not only comfort, but in less use of wood.
We have discussed stashing actual, physical cash here at home. Just need to start doing it. -
I keep enough in savings to cover unexpected events, but anything over is pulled out into cash and stashed. Things like saving up for tax payments (I never get a refund; there’s always a few thousand owed), property taxes, etc. All in cash and transfer back to bank whenever a check gets written. That way if things go sideways I have the cash already out of the bank and could make property tax payment in person with cash if necessary. Being behind by less than ten bucks can result in your losing your house these days.
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We also are retired with DH being disabled. We are on Social security but try not to rely on it much. We have a financial planner that keeps our retirement on a buget and we get monthy checks. So that keeps us on track. I do keep cash on hand for emergencies as well as being in hurricane area. We also save up cash from DH cooking collards at market. That is what we use for work that needs to be done on house. It has paid for a new furnance, air conditioner, new roof, and just a few weeks ago a new driveway, front porch and walkway. So none of that ever came out of our retirement money. So now we are saving up for next project whatever that might be next. But looking at repairs on fireplace in a few months.
The Doctor I used to work for got me into buying gold. He is an avid collector of gold coins. He buys gold everytime his social security check comes in and has done it for years. I bought some gold that would be enough to pay taxes on house few times depending on how much the gold is at the time and I do still buy silver when I can. This would be our backup emergency plan one day, but would not be enough if social security were to fall through and be gone. Gotta love the trust in our government.
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With fees and near negative interest rates why would you keep any but bare minimum in bank?
I also carry crypto currencies along with other solids however I started mining bit coins when they where about $5 each forgot an old wallet that had a few of those which I converted into several other types on a carry with me device.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>Colored gemstone and stamps can be good if you need to run light. And after shft drugs will.be a commodity both kinds.</p>
In Hong Kong they have cash restrictions for last 60 days and near impossible to sell big ticket items .
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