According to the Fed’s new survey of household economics and decision-making, forty-one percent of Americans are unable to cover unanticipated or emergent expenses totaling $400 with strict cash. Believe it or not, this is an improvement when considering that the percentage of Americans who could not scrape together $400 in 2013 was a whopping fifty percent.
After many years of post-recession recovery, Americans are still struggling to scrape up emergency cash, and nearly twenty-two percent state that they anticipate skipping payments on some of their upcoming bills. Obviously, credit card companies expect to take the greatest hit.
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Revolving credit is the poor American’s greatest asset when the cash stops flowing and family and friends cannot assist. Five percent of Americans utilize payday loan services to meet monthly expenses, thus putting them even further behind financially at the end of each month.
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Healthcare is still a luxury for many Americans as nearly twenty-seven percent will forgo medical treatment due to the cost. This is a two percent improvement from the pre-existing twenty-five percent in 2016, but a disappointment as the percentage decreased from 2013’s thirty-two percent. Patients tend to forgo the routine treatments of dental and primary care physician visits, thus exhibiting that “affordable healthcare” is a rather questionable concept.
On the bright side, seventy-four percent of Americans express that they are living comfortably.