When is it enough?

Kohadre wrote:

Warning: Spoiler!

America is known for a lot of things--football, apple pie, ridiculously large sports utility vehicles--but socking away extra cash in a savings account generally isn't near the top of the list.

And while savings rates have ticked up post-recession, American households still save far less than those in a host of other developed countries across the pond, including Italy, Spain, and France.

So what gives? Why do Americans tend to head to the mall instead of saving their hard-earned dollars for a rainy day?

A lot of it has to do with culture and government, believe it or not. Unlike institutions in Europe and other places that encouraged savings back in the day with things like postal savings banks, the U.S. government rarely nurtured saving habits, according to Princeton history professor Sheldon Garon, who recently released his book Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves.

Save for a few moments in history when saving and frugality were stressed--during the World Wars, and some initiatives in the 1800s to establish small savings banks--a concerted effort to get Americans to save more hasn't been a hallmark of our financial culture.

"The rest of the world tends to have very accessible savings institutions and the core European economies also very strictly regulate credit to protect people from becoming overindebted," Garon says, adding that in countries such as Germany and Italy, most borrowers have to pay off their entire credit card balance each month. "You try to explain to them that all you have to do is pay 2 percent minimum of the balance on your credit card and they look at you like you're from another planet."

Here in the United States, the economy virtually lives and dies by the availability of credit. When it's cut off--as consumers and businesses experienced after the Great Recession--the economy grinds to a halt. The severity of the Great Recession has made greasing the cogs of America's credit-based economy more difficult, but we really have no one to blame but ourselves, Garon says.

Instead of promoting saving, over the years public policy and savvy commercial banks have made borrowing money increasingly cheap and easy, especially throughout the 1980s and 1990s when credit card borrowing, home equity lines of credit, and subprime mortgage lending exploded.

The feast before the famine, as it were.

"Americans reached a point in the 1990s and early 2000 when most people said, 'Why would you want to save up for something when you could get the money virtually for free by borrowing,'" Garon says. "That's us."

Americans have pulled back a bit from their borrowing binge after being burned by the implosion of financial markets, but with so much of the economy's recovery dependent on consumer spending, some experts worry that American households could easily fall back into old bad habits: overborrowing and overspending.

As the economic recovery (hopefully) gains more ground this year, experts say boosting personal saving is key to helping American households better weather financial shocks. "School savings banks and postal savings banks seem antiquated now, but we should focus our energy on devising modern-day, higher-tech equivalents," the Urban Institute's Gregory Mills wrote in a recent blog post.

But that could be putting the cart before the horse a bit, given Americans still have more than a trillion dollars of outstanding debt to dig out from under.

"That digging out process may go on for years and years," Garon says. "You've got a lot of people who are seriously in debt, and now they want to get out of debt so they're trying to pay it down, but for lower and middle-income households, it's very difficult to make much progress."

mhandley@usnews.com

Twitter: @mmhandley

Copyright U.S. News & World Report; distributed by Tribune Media Services

Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune

I make what my state considers to be a livable wage, and yet find myself going through constant financial struggles because the price of goods and services continues. It seems to be a trend that the moment things begin to stabilize financially, businesses will rack up prices in order to put things out of reach once again.

I own next to nothing, all of my possessions could fit in a backpack. I am a minimalist by necessity, I had to get rid of much of what I owned during a stint of homelessness, and the desire to fill my life with excess never came back to the degree it was before, which puts me in conflict with much of the culture in my country.

I get nihilistic at times though, because there are some things I would like to have or experience, that I know I will not be able to in a time frame that I find acceptable. My workplace is a fifteen minute drive, but since I take the bus that is about a 2 hour trip one way, owning a car is beyond my financial means and will be so for the foreseeable future.

My life seems to be entirely circled around work and debt, I have no time or even ability to pursue my own interests or passions.

So, what do you need to change?

What do you want to experience that you wont be able to in a frame of time you find acceptable?

You seemed to have accepted your lot in life, which will only permanently remove any experience you may want to have.

You may have to change your expectations, and move.

The treadmill you are on, is the one you have chosen to be on. There is a huge difference in the mentality of a victim and a victor.

Right now, your life revolves around work and debt.

What do you need to do to change your situation?

Clearly, what your doing right now isn't working for you.

You also do not need to wallow in articles that only reinforce your nihilism.

Khaos wrote:

Kohadre wrote:

Warning: Spoiler!

America is known for a lot of things--football, apple pie, ridiculously large sports utility vehicles--but socking away extra cash in a savings account generally isn't near the top of the list.

And while savings rates have ticked up post-recession, American households still save far less than those in a host of other developed countries across the pond, including Italy, Spain, and France.

So what gives? Why do Americans tend to head to the mall instead of saving their hard-earned dollars for a rainy day?

A lot of it has to do with culture and government, believe it or not. Unlike institutions in Europe and other places that encouraged savings back in the day with things like postal savings banks, the U.S. government rarely nurtured saving habits, according to Princeton history professor Sheldon Garon, who recently released his book Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves.

Save for a few moments in history when saving and frugality were stressed--during the World Wars, and some initiatives in the 1800s to establish small savings banks--a concerted effort to get Americans to save more hasn't been a hallmark of our financial culture.

"The rest of the world tends to have very accessible savings institutions and the core European economies also very strictly regulate credit to protect people from becoming overindebted," Garon says, adding that in countries such as Germany and Italy, most borrowers have to pay off their entire credit card balance each month. "You try to explain to them that all you have to do is pay 2 percent minimum of the balance on your credit card and they look at you like you're from another planet."

Here in the United States, the economy virtually lives and dies by the availability of credit. When it's cut off--as consumers and businesses experienced after the Great Recession--the economy grinds to a halt. The severity of the Great Recession has made greasing the cogs of America's credit-based economy more difficult, but we really have no one to blame but ourselves, Garon says.

Instead of promoting saving, over the years public policy and savvy commercial banks have made borrowing money increasingly cheap and easy, especially throughout the 1980s and 1990s when credit card borrowing, home equity lines of credit, and subprime mortgage lending exploded.

The feast before the famine, as it were.

"Americans reached a point in the 1990s and early 2000 when most people said, 'Why would you want to save up for something when you could get the money virtually for free by borrowing,'" Garon says. "That's us."

Americans have pulled back a bit from their borrowing binge after being burned by the implosion of financial markets, but with so much of the economy's recovery dependent on consumer spending, some experts worry that American households could easily fall back into old bad habits: overborrowing and overspending.

As the economic recovery (hopefully) gains more ground this year, experts say boosting personal saving is key to helping American households better weather financial shocks. "School savings banks and postal savings banks seem antiquated now, but we should focus our energy on devising modern-day, higher-tech equivalents," the Urban Institute's Gregory Mills wrote in a recent blog post.

But that could be putting the cart before the horse a bit, given Americans still have more than a trillion dollars of outstanding debt to dig out from under.

"That digging out process may go on for years and years," Garon says. "You've got a lot of people who are seriously in debt, and now they want to get out of debt so they're trying to pay it down, but for lower and middle-income households, it's very difficult to make much progress."

mhandley@usnews.com

Twitter: @mmhandley

Copyright U.S. News & World Report; distributed by Tribune Media Services

Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune

I make what my state considers to be a livable wage, and yet find myself going through constant financial struggles because the price of goods and services continues. It seems to be a trend that the moment things begin to stabilize financially, businesses will rack up prices in order to put things out of reach once again.

I own next to nothing, all of my possessions could fit in a backpack. I am a minimalist by necessity, I had to get rid of much of what I owned during a stint of homelessness, and the desire to fill my life with excess never came back to the degree it was before, which puts me in conflict with much of the culture in my country.

I get nihilistic at times though, because there are some things I would like to have or experience, that I know I will not be able to in a time frame that I find acceptable. My workplace is a fifteen minute drive, but since I take the bus that is about a 2 hour trip one way, owning a car is beyond my financial means and will be so for the foreseeable future.

My life seems to be entirely circled around work and debt, I have no time or even ability to pursue my own interests or passions.

So, what do you need to change?

What do you want to experience that you wont be able to in a frame of time you find acceptable?

You seemed to have accepted your lot in life, which will only permanently remove any experience you may want to have.

You may have to change your expectations, and move.

The treadmill you are on, is the one you have chosen to be on. There is a huge difference in the mentality of a victim and a victor.

Right now, your life revolves around work and debt.

What do you need to do to change your situation?

Clearly, what your doing right now isn't working for you.

You also do not need to wallow in articles that only reinforce your nihilism.

I'm happy to disagree with you on most of your posts, I definitely didn't choose to be on this "treadmill" and would be all to happy to "hop off" if there was an actual way to do so. Changing life circumstances isn't as simple as thinking or saying "Hey, this kind of sucks - I want to work towards xyz instead". Sometimes, that xyz is beyond your reach by design of either bureaucratic systems or just plain discrimination, and there is NOTHING you can do to improve your circumstances because of that.

I have accepted that my life has been, and will endlessly continue to be a pile of shit, upon which the only shining moment will be my death. I have lived through abuse, homelessness, poverty, and the stigma surrounding mental illness for my entire life, and I can guarantee you that where I am at now is as good as it is going to get.

]

Kohadre wrote:
I'm happy to disagree with you on most of your posts, I definitely didn't choose to be on this "treadmill" and would be all to happy to "hop off" if there was an actual way to do so. Changing life circumstances isn't as simple as thinking or saying "Hey, this kind of sucks - I want to work towards xyz instead". Sometimes, that xyz is beyond your reach by design of either bureaucratic systems or just plain discrimination, and there is NOTHING you can do to improve your circumstances because of that.

I have accepted that my life has been, and will endlessly continue to be a pile of shit, upon which the only shining moment will be my death. I have lived through abuse, homelessness, poverty, and the stigma surrounding mental illness for my entire life, and I can guarantee you that where I am at now is as good as it is going to get.

Please do keep in mind inspirational advice is intended well, whether it is what you want to hear or not.

That out of the way, you're looking at it as the wrong thing. "The man" isn't keeping you down, unless you're talking about yourself. There are more stories of people overcoming their lives than I can recount here.

Sifu Sir Yan Ming came here from the Chinese Shaolin temple as a sideshow act to bring more tourism into China. He stayed with his comrades until after the final show, as that's what his honor demanded, and then slipped out in the chaos after the show. He spoke no English, yet got into a taxi and simply pointed to where he felt he should go. He would find himself living in the upstairs of an establishment with no electricity or running water, teaching a small group Kung Fu to pay his rent. To summarize a very long story, he is now the abbot of the New York Shaolin temple, a thing he fought and worked for and established by himself. He had almost literally everything working against him.

Please, if you have concerns you need to talk through, find someone to do so with. But don't take it out on others, and don't mistake your circumstance as unique. There are those who are there with you now whom will succeed, those whom will fail, and those whom have already succeeded or failed. Your only restriction is yourself.

Edit - Life is a waiting game, my friend. Success is often determined by how long you're willing to keep working at a goal that seems unattainable.

Kohadre wrote:

Khaos wrote:

Kohadre wrote:

Warning: Spoiler!

America is known for a lot of things--football, apple pie, ridiculously large sports utility vehicles--but socking away extra cash in a savings account generally isn't near the top of the list.

And while savings rates have ticked up post-recession, American households still save far less than those in a host of other developed countries across the pond, including Italy, Spain, and France.

So what gives? Why do Americans tend to head to the mall instead of saving their hard-earned dollars for a rainy day?

A lot of it has to do with culture and government, believe it or not. Unlike institutions in Europe and other places that encouraged savings back in the day with things like postal savings banks, the U.S. government rarely nurtured saving habits, according to Princeton history professor Sheldon Garon, who recently released his book Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves.

Save for a few moments in history when saving and frugality were stressed--during the World Wars, and some initiatives in the 1800s to establish small savings banks--a concerted effort to get Americans to save more hasn't been a hallmark of our financial culture.

"The rest of the world tends to have very accessible savings institutions and the core European economies also very strictly regulate credit to protect people from becoming overindebted," Garon says, adding that in countries such as Germany and Italy, most borrowers have to pay off their entire credit card balance each month. "You try to explain to them that all you have to do is pay 2 percent minimum of the balance on your credit card and they look at you like you're from another planet."

Here in the United States, the economy virtually lives and dies by the availability of credit. When it's cut off--as consumers and businesses experienced after the Great Recession--the economy grinds to a halt. The severity of the Great Recession has made greasing the cogs of America's credit-based economy more difficult, but we really have no one to blame but ourselves, Garon says.

Instead of promoting saving, over the years public policy and savvy commercial banks have made borrowing money increasingly cheap and easy, especially throughout the 1980s and 1990s when credit card borrowing, home equity lines of credit, and subprime mortgage lending exploded.

The feast before the famine, as it were.

"Americans reached a point in the 1990s and early 2000 when most people said, 'Why would you want to save up for something when you could get the money virtually for free by borrowing,'" Garon says. "That's us."

Americans have pulled back a bit from their borrowing binge after being burned by the implosion of financial markets, but with so much of the economy's recovery dependent on consumer spending, some experts worry that American households could easily fall back into old bad habits: overborrowing and overspending.

As the economic recovery (hopefully) gains more ground this year, experts say boosting personal saving is key to helping American households better weather financial shocks. "School savings banks and postal savings banks seem antiquated now, but we should focus our energy on devising modern-day, higher-tech equivalents," the Urban Institute's Gregory Mills wrote in a recent blog post.

But that could be putting the cart before the horse a bit, given Americans still have more than a trillion dollars of outstanding debt to dig out from under.

"That digging out process may go on for years and years," Garon says. "You've got a lot of people who are seriously in debt, and now they want to get out of debt so they're trying to pay it down, but for lower and middle-income households, it's very difficult to make much progress."

mhandley@usnews.com

Twitter: @mmhandley

Copyright U.S. News & World Report; distributed by Tribune Media Services

Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune

I make what my state considers to be a livable wage, and yet find myself going through constant financial struggles because the price of goods and services continues. It seems to be a trend that the moment things begin to stabilize financially, businesses will rack up prices in order to put things out of reach once again.

I own next to nothing, all of my possessions could fit in a backpack. I am a minimalist by necessity, I had to get rid of much of what I owned during a stint of homelessness, and the desire to fill my life with excess never came back to the degree it was before, which puts me in conflict with much of the culture in my country.

I get nihilistic at times though, because there are some things I would like to have or experience, that I know I will not be able to in a time frame that I find acceptable. My workplace is a fifteen minute drive, but since I take the bus that is about a 2 hour trip one way, owning a car is beyond my financial means and will be so for the foreseeable future.

My life seems to be entirely circled around work and debt, I have no time or even ability to pursue my own interests or passions.

So, what do you need to change?

What do you want to experience that you wont be able to in a frame of time you find acceptable?

You seemed to have accepted your lot in life, which will only permanently remove any experience you may want to have.

You may have to change your expectations, and move.

The treadmill you are on, is the one you have chosen to be on. There is a huge difference in the mentality of a victim and a victor.

Right now, your life revolves around work and debt.

What do you need to do to change your situation?

Clearly, what your doing right now isn't working for you.

You also do not need to wallow in articles that only reinforce your nihilism.

I'm happy to disagree with you on most of your posts, I definitely didn't choose to be on this "treadmill" and would be all to happy to "hop off" if there was an actual way to do so. Changing life circumstances isn't as simple as thinking or saying "Hey, this kind of sucks - I want to work towards xyz instead". Sometimes, that xyz is beyond your reach by design of either bureaucratic systems or just plain discrimination, and there is NOTHING you can do to improve your circumstances because of that.

I have accepted that my life has been, and will endlessly continue to be a pile of shit, upon which the only shining moment will be my death. I have lived through abuse, homelessness, poverty, and the stigma surrounding mental illness for my entire life, and I can guarantee you that where I am at now is as good as it is going to get.

Uh, ok....Well, have fun living in the world you have accepted as unchangeable.

I will say, it is good for you that we are in a Jedi forum, as I am tempted to show just how different the learning curve and tolerance for such nonsense is between Sith and Jedi.

If I did I doubt I could come back though.

That said, you haven't disagreed with Me, you have only reinforced that you are indeed on a treadmill of your making, and I happily leave you to it. What could be worse?

Perhaps its a bit like with relationships, where the trick can be to stop looking for what you want/desire, and instead just enjoy the moment of the now and be open to what the universe might offer up to assist you in your journey in a non-attached and balanced manner.

Seeking the fast life is a cheap ride IMO, sports cars cost a fortune to maintain, extreme sports cause too much injury or also cost a fortune etc. I've seen both sides, but instead separate myself from the concept of wealth and try to drive asceticism as much as possible and leave the financial side away from my quality of life. Look after the cents and dollars take care of themselves. It inevitably creeps in though, as the saying 'money makes money' is true to a large extent - but not because it means you can leverage better sized deals but instead because it affords the luxury of 'timing'.

So what I'm trying to say is if one defines their lot in life by what they don't have, then the trend might be to constantly consume to sate that desire - its actually buying into the consumerism which keeps people struggling - by selling the concept 'new is happy, buy new be happy'. Of course once they've bought it, its not new anymore... so they have to buy something else again. If we can see instead priceless value in the things we already have, money can instead become a resource to focus on building itself up instead of trying to build ones sense of self up.

It's why some of the harder drug users are quite content to live in squalor, everything looks beautiful when they are high, the 'warmth of decay' manifests as a new womb to retreat into - entrenching ones worldview into a primordial circuit of gratification which itself is a chemically induced illusion, and a self destructive process. Which instead can be generated and applied at lower intensity but for longer durations naturally. Things like Buddhism can be useful when viewed in that light. Anyway, of course I wish you luck and strength!!!

I find changing the way I view things helps, life may suck I get that, I have a job that just covers the bills and my life sometimes seems to be work/debt/more work.
But I decided to quit feeling sorry for myself and think of all the things I have to be grateful for.
I find time to do what interests me, cause life is what you make it. I volunteer, I visit friends and family.
I may have no money, debts, but there are always others in a worse position than you or I am.
If your alive you can change things, even if its just your attitude. Start the day grateful for being alive, make the most of each thing you do, do everything to the best of your ability and tell yourself all the time, I can be happy.
Change that this is shit voice.. I find that helps.

Zoë: [looking around the Valley] Don't think it's a good spot, Sir. She still has the advantage over us.
Mal: Everyone always does. That's what makes us special.
- Firefly

I have been reading this thread with much intrest , and i am not going to tiptoe around the issue , as a former debtcollectour i work now as a Social Worker in Debt control programs , i make clear for people where they are at with their debts and make a budget plan , this plan is evaluated every 2 weeks , that makes it a very intens and heavy program on people who also have social issues most of the time. I can not give you instant advise ! You will have to find someone to go over your papers with u and summarize where you can do better and draw up a plan.

Furhtermore i do not believe that there are people that are born for bad luck , you are not your debt , you are not your problems , you have this live to change and take power over what is bothering you, no matter what crap has happened to you in the past , you are not those things. You are one of us and i think you are capable of solving this. Now.

Adder wrote:
the 'warmth of decay' manifests as a new womb to retreat into

that's quite the metaphor!

Ah yes, the rat race. When I was growing up my mom was gone from 7am-4pm managing an apartment complex for the elderly, then from 5pm-9pm working at a woman's clothing store, or an arts and crafts store before that but also on the weekends she had to also work as a janitor cleaning up an office building. My dad was never paying the child support and my brothers dad was always behind too. My mom was always under the pressure to provide us necessities like food and clothes but also caught up in wanting to get us extra stuff for the fun or take us places or to get things for herself. We had a house but she was playing the mortgage game and after taking loans to do a remodeling job that would hopefully help out with the mortgage situation and up the chance to sell it imploded and she lost the house outright. We had to get rid of our family dog and move into an apartment, which after a few months part of the building caught on fire and we had to move out.

This was about when I was 16 or so and instead of moving with her to her friend's place I decided to stay with a friend. I guess I was lucky that I had supportive friends who taught me how to earn a living because my mom was never home, didn't have much contact with my dad. Whether it was mowing lawns, cleaning, helping with and learning some construction stuff the little I got helped and being under a roof and being fed allowed me to save everything I earned. Honestly in today's world if you're on your own in a sense and you want to not just survive but thrive, you're going to have to take risks and you may even have to go outside the law society. I don't mean that you have to steal and hurt people, but a lot of people do that too. I'm just saying that since this game is rigged and taken full advantage of by people at the top, don't expect much from it. My outlook as a teen was that there are only fast food factory jobs around, I wasn't going to be able to save to go to school and I didn't want the debt of going to school. I know some people who it all worked out for, but I know a lot more that it didn't and now they make more money doing something completely different than what they went to college for or they are just stuck in debt. We all have to find our own way but remember strength comes in numbers, you need family and friends and if you don't have them well you better get out and do some soul searching and networking. The greatest thing I was taught was to "set zeros" - say you make some money, you've got to just pretend that money isn't there and operate under the conditions as if it really wasn't there until you keep saving up, setting more zeros. I understand though that when you're down and don't have much to work with, it seems impossible.

What it really comes down to for all of us is what each of us wants out of life, or what we think we want, what we are influenced to expect. The game is very elaborate in that on the one hand you'll work all your life and may not ever actually be able to catch up to your bills and let's face it - shit happens, medical conditions, emergency situations. Then on the other hand you're constantly being assaulted with advertising, product placement, subliminal messages, standards about how life should be lived by all the entertainments. It's really just like a matrix dreamworld, a psychic weapon (physical too because of police and tax laws) used to distract all of us from the beauty of creation all around us. All the stress from this causes people to go absolutely nuts as they try to conform to an insane system, they turn to drugs (legal and illegal) that makes things worse, various forms of self-hate, apathy, lethargy and as well as what we are seeing so often now they turn to violence - and no amount of violence, redistribution of wealth, socialism, communism, gun control, drug control, is going to do much about it. Violence begets violence, equality across the board is a joke as some will always be more equal than others considering their inherited and maintained wealth and power. All the political isms are just sold to people to distract them from the same groups that were and still will be in controlling positions. The problems with guns and drugs are much deeper because all of these problems in the world are just a reflection of every individuals' psychology that's manifesting globally as everyone just projects their inner problems out into the world instead of taking responsibility for their own choices and behavior that would promote collective reconciliation.

Idk I've spent years questioning everything going down the rabbit hole and as important as I think it is to learn about the extent of the corruption going on I think it's more important to just find the little things in life that you enjoy. A lot of people I know who have lived a life of illusory or actual luxury and comfort have had to fall to rock bottom or have their lives' shattered by a traumatic event in order for them to kind of consciously wake up and see things differently or learn to appreciate things they never were even aware of. Sometimes I think substances such as psilocybin or ayahuasca can also help people who are stuck in the maze but obviously it depends on the individual cause in my neck of the woods at least once a year someone does something absolutely insane while being under the influence.

Personally I don't know where I'd be or what I'd be doing if it weren't for my friends. We are all always on the edge of life whether we realize it or not, anything can happen at anytime, some of us are in better situations or positions than others. Another real wake up call for me was coming to Russia to meet my girlfriend, I'm here now and it's in such a poor region of Russia I couldn't believe it when I first got here coming from California. I was so anxious and felt strange but I've spent 4 months here now and I not only have such appreciation for how I live back home, the police, the environmental agencies, but I have respect and feel silly when I've thought that I've got it bad compared to people here, and you can look at other poor parts of the world where people have nothing and still find happiness and enjoyment in their life. Every second we live we can choose our perception, and choose how we react to life. The other thing is motivation, in northern California where I'm from there are so many homeless people on the streets holding signs and in Russia the only people on the street holding signs that I've seen are old women because they don't get retirement and all the social security benefits. I know that if I'm ever in the position of being on the street with nothing, I'm going to still find ways to stay clean and the signs I'm going to hold will be asking for work - not money. I'm going to be going to places and trying to apply myself through volunteering which will help me network with people and lead to new opportunities. So many people give up and where I live it really seems they have chosen that lifestyle and are now just parasitically leeching from the community and also polluting it with their feces, garbage and negative attitudes. Very rarely do you come across someone whom you just know they really are down on their luck and could really use the help.

Idk Kohadre the article you posted and topics like this strike a nerve with me. I think we all just need to keep up the fire, do what we can trying to progress and get to where we are going.