Why Are Most Americans So Broke

so why is it so challenging for Americans as a group to save we're one of the richest countries in the world but if you look at how much we save relative to what the value of the goods and services that we produce some known as gross domestic product we're one of the lowest saving countries in the developed World we're at 1 and a half% and to put that in comparison Mexico is almost at 5% and Denmark believe it or not is at 22% right so there's big big swings in in how much we're saving and so today I want to talk about that and and how this relates to all of us is you know the the headwinds that we as a country are facing are the things that you and I are facing as well right um and and so the first one and several of these are going to be controversial but the first one I want to talk about is just you know the cost of our housing has just risen so dramatically if if you look at the mid 1960s the average house in inflation in today's dollars in inflation adjusted uh so that these are today's dollars in the mid 1960s the average house cost $172,000 and the median wage in the country in today's dollars was $60,000 the median household uh I should say median household income so it took the average household you know a little little under three years of 100% of their wages going to buy a house and if you fast forward to today um the median house is $375,000 and the median household wage earnings is $70,000 so we've gone from taking three times um what our wages our full household wage to pay for a house we've it's almost doubled it's gone from three times 3 years worth of our salary our wages to five times right and that's a big jump and you know that's taking a huge huge toll right the reality is housing is expensive rents have gone up uh it's getting harder and harder it's even harder now uh to qualify uh for a loan with interest rates up there's a lot of people that just cannot qualify for a loan large enough um to to buy the type of house you know even a starter house uh that many of many of my viewers uh myself in that group as well uh bought for our first home back in the day when we started so it's it's much much more difficult now okay so so that's one is just um the H the price of housing the other one and it's kind of Illustrated with the price of housing is unfortunately the median wage uh in the country hasn't kept hasn't done that well it's it hasn't kept up as well with inflation you know certainly the top quartile of Americans are are doing better and are beating inflation by a lot but in general uh the the lower 50% is basically keeping up with inflation and and just beating it a little bit as I showed you know the numbers um in the mid 1960s was 60,000 now it's 70,000 median household income that's not a lot of growth there right probably in that same time period the upper quartile has done quite a bit better than than than that right so one is just the wages the wages have been held down why have the wages been held down there's a number and number of factors on that one is it's a very Global competitive world uh and this is not a political uh Channel but there there are political reasons for that as well and I I think the hearts of both parties both parties want to see uh the American middle class continue to arrive and to continue to do well okay so another thing that's that's making it harder for people to save is there's less on the job training now than there was in my father's era right now a lot of jobs require a college education where in My Father's Day you know you could get a good paying job and they would teach you the skills that they needed you to have on the job but now a lot of folks are expected to come in with that base skill level and having gone to college and you know we looked at uh the cost of housing versus inflation um same thing and probably worse when it comes to education right the the cost of Education as we all know has really skyrocketed um and and for me when I was going to college you know a good summer job uh could could put a nice dent in a state colleges tuition for the year maybe not handle all of it uh but it was possible and in today's world it's just so much more difficult to do that so people come out with debt um and and so then there's you know you you takes longer until you can start working because you went to college and then college is expensive now the trade schools uh trade schools can there's a shortage of crafts people uh of of Journeymen and for instance like to be a plumber or an electrician uh or a carpenter you get paid while you're being trained uh to do that job it's hard work it's important work the nation there's a shortage of all those crafts uh and the nation needs those folks so one one solution is you know consider the crafts you know there's multiple routes to helping you live your best life so and another one is consider leveling up your skills with something short of a four-year degree right um I went to college it was the right thing for me to do but you know for a lot of folks they don't want to do that and if you don't want to do that there should be other routes other avenues um to increasing your pay for instance when my when my daughter was working a minimum wage job you know for less than $1,500 she took a course that was less than six weeks on how to become a certified nursing assistant a CNA uh and she did those classes part-time so that was a great return for her because she was making you know let's call it $8 to $10 an hour and then as a CNA she was making closer to $25 an hour 22 $23 an hour I think at the end she was making closer to 25 an hour so that's a huge return on on on investment and then you can take those extra dollars and get additional skills on top of that right and and I basically outside of College where really college is you know it's a life experience and it's also a certification right you get a piece of paper with your name on it that right or wrong is really important to employers right but outside of the college experience you can learn a lot of skills where the information is free either uh through YouTube videos or uh podcast or audibles which are very inexpensive I use a a platform called udem me udm y UT me.com uh corera is a place that has uh top tier universities that will put their courses online for free so you can get the information you won't get the certification you won't get the diploma but you can get the information and then you if if you say okay I'm going in I need to really Master this skill then for me personally then I'm willing to pay for teaching me how to execute on it teaching me how to implement on it this skill set but first I jump in and I listen to podcast I read some $20 books um watch a lot of YouTube get the information and then only when I'm sure that this is something I want to take the leap then I pay for somebody to help me with the execution so I hope you found this helpful if you did I know you'll enjoy this video here that talks about average income for retirees in this video down here that talks about five reasons to retire as soon as you can thanks for watching bye-bye

Channel: Azul

Views: 31,090

Keywords: why americans are broke, americans are broke, why are americans broke, why most american are broke, americans broke, why american are broke, american broke, americans are broke - here's why, american is broke, 3 reasons why americans are still broke!, broke, americans are going broke at alarming rate, american dream, personal finance, retirement, retirement crisis, retirement poverty, retirement plan, americans retirement, saving for retirement, us retirement crisis, azul

Id: Uv3_QwXBIPM

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 15 2023