1y ago

'An economic divide that is widening': Almost one third of Americans earning $150,000 a year or more say they're living paycheck to paycheck and many rely on credit cards to close the gap

finance.yahoo.com 'An economic divide that is widening': Almost one third of Americans earning $150,000 a year or more say they're living paycheck to paycheck and many rely on credit cards to close the gap

Some say they won’t be able to pay off their credit cards by the end of the year.

'An economic divide that is widening': Almost one third of Americans earning $150,000 a year or more say they're living paycheck to paycheck and many rely on credit cards to close the gap

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I mean you can make any income be paycheck to paycheck by spending too much.
- 150k for me would be a dream right now. I have a dog, a gf, and I rent. But if you're making 150k and you have two kids and a spouse for example, suddenly that 150k doesn't go very far at all.
- Yep, my mother used to manage pays for engineers making up to 300k and for some of them it was a disaster if a mistake lead to 200$ being missing from their cheque and they would be in her office first thing in the morning in full panic mode...
  
  I mean, if my cheque was off by a couple of hundred dollars, I'd want to follow up on the discrepancy (not in panic mode though). My wife's a high earner and some pay was delayed a month due to staff turnover.
  Leadership was like "it shows financial stability to be able to wait for pay," but people have budgets and plans for that money. Otherwise it's an interest free loan to the organization - the money should be paid out timely.
  But I do agree, overall, that folks should be able to manage their budget, especially as a high earner.
  
  It shows financial instability if an organization can't pay its workers on time. Or management incompetence.
  
  That's wild to me.
  
  Especially considering that at the time they could have just bought a house minutes from their office on a year's salary instead of being over their head in debt because they preferred living in the next city in a house worth a couple millions...
  
  That's why lifestyle creep is a tough one. You make more money and then start thinking you want a bigger home, nicer car, eat out a lot more etc. It's hard to scale back from that when the times get tougher as selling a multi-million home isn't that easy.

274 comments