Dont get it twisted.

Cite?

Yes, the person making the claim that 80% live paycheck to paycheck should cite
- You’ve claimed that they aren’t. Please prove.
  
  https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/survey-living-paycheck-to-paycheck/
  40% live paycheck to paycheck
  
  We asked respondents to describe their current income situation.
  You mean 40% of forbes readers live paycheck to paycheck?!
  This may surprise you but not everyone reads forbes.
  (selection bias)
  
  Lots of articles are saying 60 to 69%. CNBC, Barrons, LendingClub. I can’t find a better source but.. 40% from a rich person’s mag like forbes is just too much man. I would estimate 55% to 70%, so 80% doesn’t seem that far off.
His citation is a forbes survey saying 40% (riddled with selection bias)

Based on vibes or what?

The person who makes the claim should prove it first
- Good point. So, prove your claim, please.
  
  https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/survey-living-paycheck-to-paycheck/
  40% live paycheck to paycheck
  
  We asked respondents to describe their current income situation.
  You mean 40% of forbes readers live paycheck to paycheck?!
  This may surprise you but not everyone reads forbes.
  (selection bias)
  
  Where does it say they only surveyed readers?
  
  I mean, forbes did the survey. Do you think they didn’t use their reader base?
  
  As for only surveying readers, lemme look at the survey and see if it said that. My concern is that a magazine performing a survey is going to have some issues with selection bias.
  edit:
  
  So, in this case, it suffers from a very small sample size. There may be funding concerns too.
  
  3000 is not a small sample size. 30 is a small sample size.
  Presidential polls are often done with this, or even smaller sample sizes.
  
  This may surprise you to know but America has a little over 3000 people in it. Some estimate the number to be over 1,000,000!
  Now, if we estimate the american population to be at 1,000,000, that means 3,000 is a sample size of only 0.3%.
  Now, 0.3% may seem like a large number and indeed it is when compared to 30, which would be a sample size of 0.03%.
  I wonder how big the working population of america is?
  United States Employed Persons was reported at 161,183,000.000 Person in Dec 2023 See the table below for more data.
  Hmm, so it seems 161,183,000 is a bit larger than 1,000,000. It’s actually about 161.183 times my original estimate! That would make 3,000 people bout 0.001%.
  Now, 0.001% is a very small number.
  
  You might want to look up sampling. If the sample is randomly distributed, you can calculate the chance that the given data is because of sampling error.
  You see, it doesn't matter what the total population is for the sampling error. It only matters what your number of samples is and the absolute difference between the groups.
  
  Lots of articles are saying 60 to 69%. CNBC, Barrons, LendingClub. I can’t find a better source but.. 40% from a rich person’s mag like forbes is just too much man. I would estimate 55% to 70%, so 80% doesn’t seem that far off.
  
  Source?
  60% to 80% is literally a jump of 2x, meaning twice as many people who have savings
  80% is incredibly far off
  https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/27/60percent-of-americans-are-still-living-paycheck-to-paycheck.html
  Gives lending club as source so basically it's the same source
  Where did you get 69%
  
  Neither you nor I have a decent source yet. All of these sources are from surveys, you just pick your organization. A skimming of the google search results for this gives numbers in the 55% to 69% range, but that’s not a good source. So far what we’ve found is:
  Forbes survey: 40% Lending club survey 60%
  I don’t have a source for 80% where the meme claimed.
  
  Because 80% is not correct. The median person has $8,000 saved in just their bank accounts, not including retirement (which you can take out paying a penalty) and CoD (which you can take out after paying a few months penalty)
  https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/average-savings-by-age/
  So half of people have more than this amount saved. I personally have less than this in my bank and a lot more in taxable investments which were not measured
  How do people save if 80% are living paycheck to paycheck?
  
  And your number is also not correct! See how this works?
  Again my guy. a mag for rich folks isn’t going to be unbiased

you're also not the working poor if you live paycheck to paycheck and make 150k/year. you just fucking aren't, it's your own fault you're not saving money at that point

This is the problem with consumerism. Most American households do live with very little savings. Even people with really high income do this. It's culturally normal and encouraged with all the advertising to buy more stuff.
A doctor earning over $300,000 a year in the Midwest should but under any circumstances be considered the working poor simply because they don't have any savings.
HCOL
- My dad made around this amount in SF Bay Area and we made do, including a big mortgage payment, car payments, etc.
  150K is a lot of money
  
  In 2024?
  
  He made 130K a some years ago, which is only a bit over 150K in 2024 money
  
  Uh huh..
- Just because you had to live in a neighborhood with $5000/month rent doesn't mean you're poor just because you piss your money away. A doctor with no money leftover every month isn't poor, he's just removed.
  
  That’s the thing about HCOL areas, they generally don’t pay well, either.

Some more accurate data from Forbes:

40,74% living with nothing left over after monthly expenses
29,13% more unable to cover their surprise expenses
30,13% able to actually accumulate and save

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/survey-living-paycheck-to-paycheck/