many Americans are the worst with money...this is a crisis in the US

5 simple tips to better savings ..... [might work for someone or might not]

1] Learn to cook your own food
2] Take a walk or cycle to travel short distances instead of driving
[Savings add up]
3] Think thrice before you buy something non-essential
4] Stop smoking and drinking
5] STOP Impulse buys and ego-buys [i.e others have it, so i must have it]

 

There's apartments renting in Manhattan in the $10,000 range

She was paying $30,000 a year on an interest only mortgage. That was 50% of her income.

That's some great advantage to get you life on budget

 

I don't think taxes really have much to do with this. If you look you will see anumber of countries with higher taxes, yet the people in them still put more their money into saving then most of us Americans.


the reason a lot of people don't save is our gotta have it now culture. if that doesn't change it wont matter if you get rid of taxes or triple them people are still going to spend what they got on junk they don't need instead of saving it.

 

Yes, sadly Americans are spoiled.

 

Taxes do play into it, we get a lot less in return for what we pay. Plenty of Americans fall into the 40-60% tax rate once you fully count all of the bills like federal income tax, social security (13%), medicare, state property tax, state income tax, state/local sales tax. We send the majority of the money to Washington D.C. and basically that's just a big money pit. This is the collective wastefulness - which is a huge part of the problem.

Federal taxes aren't efficiently returned as education, medicine, or local law enforcement. I don't think it really matters who is elected, centralization just doesn't work. If a school on the northwest side of Jacksonville needs new books, the federal Congress couldn't be bothered with such a trivial detail. Federal government seems to be good for corporate welfare, war, and well, killing the economy. In most of western Europe, the workers are taxes at a similar overall rate, but since they money stays more local within the states, the return includes public medicine, cheap college, and public transportation... Plenty of places pay roughly the same level of taxation and get better services that could be subtracted from the American cost of living.

 

Bailouts make the problem worse. People need to take responsibility for themselves. It's hard to feel sorry for someone that takes out a $2500 interest only loan when she could have rented an apartment for half the amount.

 

That is all there is left. What else can you do if you can't even afford to pay the interest on the loan?

 

That might work

She can post something like I need $2500 by the end of the month. Write articles and stuff.

 

If she looked at my finances she would be able to pay the $2500 a month interest

 

There's a video here

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2008/03/27/gutierrez.food.bank.family.cnn

That's a big house that she's trying to pay interest on. No wonder she has to go to a food bank.

 

Damn man, if that's povery, I really wish to be a "poor" American like that. Here you need 10 working families to buy a house like that.

 

She can't even afford to pay the interest. The bank owns the house.

If I move in there, it wouldn't be long before she has me living in a cardboard box

 

There is no such thing as financial education in Americas schools today.

Now, suffer!

 

That is what your family is supposed to teach you.