Important Takeaways:
- Even Americans earning more than six figures are worried about their finances
- A growing number of Americans making six-figure salaries are worried about paying their monthly bills, according to a new survey published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
- The survey shows that more than 30% of respondents earning between $100,000 and $149,999 are concerned about making ends meet within the next six months. That marks a sharp increase from one year ago, when 21.3% of individuals in that income bracket expressed concern about making ends meet.
- At the same time, about 32.5% of individuals earning more than $150,000 are worried about being able to pay their bills, which also marks an increase from the 21.7% figure reported one year ago.
- Interestingly, those more affluent Americans are actually more worried about their finances than many individuals who are earning less money. About 29.8% of individuals making between $40,000 and $69,999 said they are concerned, up from 23.9% last year.
- The typical U.S. household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 more compared with three years ago.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Pentagon is moving U.S. military assets closer to Israel and Lebanon to be ready to evacuate Americans as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies
- U.S. officials are increasingly concerned Israel is going to carry out airstrikes and a possible ground offensive in Lebanon in the coming weeks.
- Israel wants to move Hezbollah farther away from the border and is pushing for a diplomatic solution, but if that does not work the Israel Defense Forces are ready to use force, an Israeli official said.
- The goal is to return quiet to northern Israel so that 60,000 Israelis who have left in the past eight months because of Hezbollah rocket fire can go home, the official said.
- The State Department estimated in 2022 that 86,000 Americans live in Lebanon. In 2006, the U.S. evacuated 15,000 people from the country during Israel’s war with Hezbollah.
- In a statement, Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said restoring calm along the Israel-Lebanon border “remains a top priority for the United States and must be of the utmost importance for both Lebanon and Israel. We continue to work toward a diplomatic resolution that would allow Israeli and Lebanese citizens to safely return to their homes and live in peace and security.”
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Important Takeaways:
- More than a quarter of Americans have resorted to skipping meals to avoid paying inflated grocery store prices, according to a new survey.
- According to a study by Qualtrics on behalf of Intuit Credit Karma, 80% of Americans say they have felt a “notable increase” in grocery costs in recent years. More than a quarter of respondents said the increased cost has led them to occasionally skip meals, while about one-third said they spend more than 60% of their monthly income on mandatory expenses such as food, utilities and rent.
- “Food insecurity is a major issue in this country as millions of Americans don’t have enough food to eat or don’t have access to healthy food,” Courtney Alev, a consumer financial advocate at Credit Karma, said in a statement.
- Of the Americans surveyed in the Credit Karma poll, 44% reported feeling financially unstable. This feeling is strongest among households making less than $50,000.
- The rising cost of living is also a likely factor in the increasing number of Americans taking on debt (55%).
- A large majority of consumers (80%) said they felt the most notable increases in expenses were for groceries, followed by gasoline, utilities, housing and dining out.
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Important Takeaways:
- Americans Dismayed over Waning Influence of Religion in Public Life
- According to the survey, 57 percent of Americans believe religion plays a positive role in public life, while only 19 percent have a negative view of the role of religion.
- Overall, “there are widespread signs of unease with religion’s trajectory in American life,” Pew reveals, and this dissatisfaction “is not just among religious Americans.”
- A remarkable 80 percent of U.S. adults currently believe the influence of religion in American life is dwindling, Pew finds, and over 60 percent of these think this is a bad thing.
- Leftists like Hollywood producer Rob Reiner have proclaimed a dangerous rise in “Christian nationalism” and one Politico reporter recently suggested that those who share Thomas Jefferson’s belief that human rights come from God rather than government are all “Christian nationalists,” presumably plotting a theocratic coup d’état.
- Commenting on the report, Catholic League president Bill Donohue said that Americans’ concern for the decline in religion in public life likely has to do with the fact that “the inculcation of religious values has a stabilizing effect on individuals, and hence on society.”
- Character building, which is essential to citizenship, “is facilitated by religion,” Donohue added. “Unfortunately, American society has become more unstable and character building has become more difficult.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of 2021, right before inflation soared to 40-year highs, according to a recent analysis of government data.
- Such figures underscore the financial squeeze many families continue to face even as the rate of U.S. inflation recedes and the economy by many measures remains strong, with the jobless rate at a two-decade low. The analysis, from Republican members of the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee, taps government data such as the Consumer Price Index and Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine the impact of inflation state by state.
- Even so, many Americans say they aren’t feeling those gains, and this fall more people reported struggling financially than they did prior to the pandemic, according to CBS News polling. Inflation is the main reason Americans express pessimism about economy despite its bright points, which also include stronger wage gains in recent years.
- The Biden administration called the analysis “flawed.”
- Around the U.S., the state with the highest additional expenditures to afford the same standard of living compared with 2021 is Colorado, where a household must spend an extra $15,000 per year, the JEC analysis found. Residents in Arkansas, meanwhile, have to spend the least to maintain their standard of living, at about $8,500 on an annual basis.
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Important Takeaways:
- Just over half of Americans over the age of 65 are earning under $30,000 a year, and it shows how stark the retirement crisis is
- There’s a retirement crisis looming for many Americans — and some are already living on scant incomes. Retirement becoming a luxury for Americans hoping to get a reprieve in their later years is something a handful of lawmakers are hoping to change.
- The report cited the National Retirement Risk Index which found that around half of households “will not be able to maintain their pre-retirement living standard,” and 56% of low-income households — and 45% of those who are middle-income — were “at risk” of not maintaining those pre-retirement standards at age 65.
- Even more glaringly, 73% of those in the bottom group of wealth holders were similarly at risk, compared to 28% of those in the highest wealth group.
- And, for some, the retirement crisis is already here. Just over half of Americans over the age of 65 are living on incomes of $30,000 or less a year, according to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. The largest share — just under 23% — have incomes between $10,000 and $19,999.
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Important Takeaways:
- Subtle Change in Ukraine Blame Means Deadly Trouble for Americans
- A very subtle change in the words coming out of the Russian Foreign Ministry signals the FINAL step before the annihilation of the United States. We have now reached the final step . . .
- The wording used by the Russian Foreign Ministry was very subtle, but its implications are anything but. See if you can pick-up the subtle change in this excerpt from RT:
- The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs who were killed last week when the Russian Il-76 military aircraft transporting them was shot down by Kiev’s troops, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has said.
- On Thursday, Russia’s Investigative Committee released a report stating that the cargo plane was destroyed using two US-made MIM-104A missiles fired by a Patriot air-defense system. The Il-76 came down in Russia’s Belgorod Region last Wednesday. All of those on board – 65 Ukrainian POWs, three Russian troops, and six crew members – were killed.
- Russian investigators stated that Ukrainian troops fired the missiles from a staging area in Kharkov Region, not far from the village of Liptsy, some 10km from the Russian border. They based their conclusion on 116 missile fragments found at the crash site bearing inscriptions in English.
- Responding to the report, Zakharova said in a Telegram post that US citizens “need to know where their money is going,” arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.”
- Did you catch it? Did you pick up the subtle change in the language they used? It’s right there in front of you!
- Here, let me focus it for you:
- “The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs . . .”
- Then again, in a later paragraph:
- ” . . .arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.” “”
- Remember, this nation celebrates Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address wherein he posited that we have “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
- Ergo, when the US Government does something, it does it in OUR name. You and me.
- The Russians have now made clear who it is they hold responsible for what the US Government is doing: YOU and ME.
- Why should Russia sit back and allow us to supply arms to Ukraine, which are now clearly being used to kill Russians?
- Why shouldn’t Russia tell the United States (again) to stop supplying weapons that are killing Russians and then add, or Russia will start hitting the United States?
- Why shouldn’t Russia make it direct? Blunt?
- Well . . . . turns out, they just began making it blunt. At the top of this Op-Ed, they have now begun blaming “American citizens.” You and me.
- Where is this leading?
- What is the difference between “Killing” and “murder?”
- Murder is the unlawful killing of an innocent. But “Killing” is allowable if it is “justified.”
- For instance, if a guy is aiming a gun at you, and you do something which kills him, that is “self defense” and not murder, even though the guy is now dead.
- The Russian Foreign Ministry has now begun laying the historical groundwork to justify exactly that.
- By changing their statements to lay blame upon “the American people” they are building a record to justify killing . . .
- Wise-up folks.
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Important Takeaways:
- Record number of Americans are homeless amid nationwide surge in rent, report finds
- According to a Jan. 25 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, roughly 653,000 people reported experiencing homelessness in January of 2023, up roughly 12% from the same time a year prior and 48% from 2015. That marks the largest single-year increase in the country’s unhoused population on record, Harvard researchers said.
- Homelessness, long a problem in states such as California and Washington, has also increased in historically more affordable parts of the U.S. Arizona, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas have seen the largest growths in their unsheltered populations due to rising local housing costs.
- That alarming jump in people struggling to keep a roof over their head came amid blistering inflation in 2021 and 2022 and as surging rental prices across the U.S. outpaced worker wage gains. Although a range of factors can cause homelessness, high rents and the expiration of pandemic relief last year contributed to the spike in housing insecurity, the researchers found.
- The median rent in the U.S. was $1,964 in December 2023, up 23% from before the pandemic
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Important Takeaways:
- 56 million Americans have been in credit card debt for at least a year. ‘We are seeing pockets of trouble,’ expert says
- Americans are increasingly leaning on their credit cards.
- Altogether, card balances now total $1.08 trillion, according to the latest quarterly report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a new record.
- “Over the past two years, Americans’ credit card balances have skyrocketed 40%,” said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.
- Nearly half, or 49%, of credit card holders carry debt from month to month on at least one card, up from 46% last year, the report found, and 56 million cardholders have been in debt for at least a year.
- The average credit card rate is now more than 20%, on average — an all-time high
- At 20.74%, if you made minimum payments toward the average credit card balance — which is $6,088, according to Transunion — it would take you more than 17 years to pay off the debt and cost you more than $9,072 in interest, Bankrate calculated.
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Important Takeaways:
- 99% of Americans will be financially worse-off than they were pre-pandemic by mid-2024, JPMorgan says
- The majority of Americans have burned through their excess savings piled up during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the coming months, JPMorgan says it is likely that almost everyone will be worse off financially than they were in 2019.
- In a Thursday note, the bank’s top stock strategist Marko Kolanovic said 80% of consumers, a group that accounts for nearly two-thirds of consumption, has already depleted any savings cushion they may have built during lockdowns.
- “It is likely that only the top 1% of consumers by income will be better off than before the pandemic,” Kolanovic wrote, pointing to the growing signs of credit card and auto loan delinquencies, as well as Chapter 11 filings.
- JPMorgan estimated previously that excess savings had peaked in August 2021 at $2.1 trillion, boosted by government stimulus checks. That’s since been whittled down to below $148 billion, per the firm’s calculations as of October.
- As Bank of America wrote in a recent note, the plight of elder millennials is particularly difficult.
- Older millennials — a demographic of Americans born in the 1980s that holds significant influence on the US economy — have had to navigate the 2008 financial crisis in addition to the pandemic during critical working years of their lives.
- The two economic storms, as well as mounting childcare costs and sticky inflation, have made it difficult for the sizable cohort to own a house, save for retirement, and comfortably spend money within their means.
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