Bitcoin Forum

The average personal amount of savings are between $ 2,900 for the USA and ¥ 5,806,554 for Japan. The USA comes last in our ranking, but their neighbor Canada is one of the richest countries regarding personal savings.




https://www.expertmarket.com/focus/research/countries-that-save-the-most-money

Switzerland   $58,389   19.03%   $11,109.09   $925.76   $30.44   $1.27



Switzerland People save most money!

A lot of people are in debt, so consider yourself lucky if you have any savings I guess.  and some people wonder why consumer spending is way down and many companies are going out of business.  We are more productive then ever but the wealth inequality keeps getting stronger.

That's why Americans are always very rich and their GDP is increasing every year. because they never let their money lose value every year due to inflation.
We really need to learn about effective ways to invest so our money doesn't lose value over the years.

Most Americans are on their broke arse like most other places.

Of the people I know there's little middle ground. There are either people who could last for years without working and the others wouldn't last to the end of the day.

One thing I do find a bit silly about these surveys is they never take into account possessions and assets. Most people will have something they can get rid of in difficult times, that's if it wasn't financed.

Well, you actually do need a pretty significant emergency fund that you can easily access.
Especially in the US I'd say.

If they run into any medical issues which aren't covered by their insurance, they're pretty much bankrupt.
If they even have insurance in the first place, that is...

It is easy to manage a country in the healthy wau if the population is very low so we cannot compare the countries with huge population and very few thousand populated country.

Yeah,i was supposed to say about the difference of population numbers. I don't mind or easily believe about average savings across the globe yet

there are even people on some countries specially 3rd world ones doesn't even have a savings and do have a hard time on completing their 3 meals a day.
How much more on thinking to have a bank savings which isn't really that possible.

For countries mentioned above,i don't have idea that Americans do have that kind of average savings.

If someone from India and USA doing the same job but their salary will be huge in difference so where they born is really matter to decide how good they are financially.But America still not the best GDP even they claim that they are the super power in this whole world and the same thing happens with China as well.

So governments are making few people rich and demanding taxes from everyone keep the others poor.

Norway and Australia are the Same level on savings thing!

And that's the whole reason why professionals from India is hired big time by these American companies! A lot of American companies open up their subsidiaries in a country like India or Philippines and move their back-office related work because it saves a lot of money for them. Business wise, it makes a lot of sense! Canada may be leading in the list of personal savings but Qatar leads in the list of per capita income! American leads in fire power only!

They are so lucky to have savings. Anyway, in my country almost 70% of our populations are poor so you don't need to expect that they have savings. Well, the reason is that they have a lot of kids but they are only earning a minimum wage so there is 0% of chances to get rich and have more savings.

Problem is that whole Keynesian economic model is build to promote debt and punish savings. That is what governments did in last 50 years and more. Of course that people slowly took that as the truth and started doing same. Now with negative interest rates will be even much worse.

Interesting list, but I wonder based on what that list has been made or how those data were collected. Anyways, you can't compare which country is rich based on personal savings. The personal savings of a country depends on various factors such as interest rates, future expected profit, future inflation and other tons of other stuffs. If people see that there is an opportunity to make some good profit due to some reason or  event taking place, people won't be keeping their money in the bank. They would rather start investing in order to maximized their future profit. So a country with good economy might also have a low personal savings. Remember though, this low savings will eventually reach equilibrium in the long run.

I Think the list is pretty accurate
Countries Where savings low People are in debted highly too.


Some countries People live in -200 a Monthly like it means  Every Monthly they have missing some ammount of money in Order to survive someone have borrow the money!

Those 8 countries at the bottom. I used to believe that most of them are wealthy and able to save a lot of money but if this study is for real, cost of living from those countries are literally high.

Yes, due to loans and other circumstances they can't save. Because instead of saving themselves money, they have obligations to pay like those loans that they took. And that's one rule so that you can save, pay your debts first.

This has nothing to do with population. If anything, being a huge country presents huge opportunities - one can get in a car and drive from California to Michigan on a whim if there is a better paying job there (may or may not be based on a true story). Not that easy for Switzerlanders... or whatever they call themselves.

It's the utter inability to make rational decisions (both on the personal level and on a macro scale) that's a major factor here. Probably a fundamental failure in the education system.

I didn't have time to thoroughly read the whole article but the information seems flawed right from the get-go.  The author is comparing the number of cents per hour that citizens of the US, Canada, and Mexico are able to save, but what's not taken into account is the difference in wages and costs of living in those various countries.

Also, I'm not sure what the author is considering as "savings."  Is her scope only including traditional savings accounts?  Because I don't put shit in my traditional savings account.  My employer matches what I deposit into my 401K, and if I have a little left after my monthly budget it goes into an IRA account (or crypto.)

Some people don't save although they live a simple life. Many people in the world find it very difficult to eat more than once a day due to poverty. Imagine if you are to be in such situation how can you use save for the future. Eventually, the few money you would gain would be used to cover basic needs your family needs.

Huge country means huge opportunities but if the population is huge the employment opportunities will hinder.

Migration can be an option to make more money but like you said its not easy and not possible for many countries people's.

Huge Country means more people more people means Also more money.

But this topic is about average savings not the total savings.

And also poor countries has most richest people but their government is only poor.

but Canadians won't really get many billionaires. because when saving too much, the cash flow in Canada will be greatly reduced and not generate profits for the whole country.
Saving is one of the worst methods, we should really look for something to invest and always make a profit every year so our money doesn't lose value due to inflation.

Lol, this is very informative, I can't imagine that some people are even living above their earning to the extent of having debt. Could it be that their cost of living is high? If the cost of living is high, then they should cut it down, because no one can tell me that it is tax that does that.

I have made attempt several times to relocate to the united states, but they kept discouraging me that the standard of their living is too high and that they paid tax a lot, and this makes me wonder why someone would earn $58,000 in a year and only  able to save $11000, is that not too low? What exactly did they spend their money on? Groceries or what? My country, with that $58000, I will surely save at least $30000 per year. For me, I am still able to save at least.

For me I don't see it as something to rejoice about for increased savings because it connotes lack of understanding on the part of the populace who likely believed that saving would make them rich eventually whereas the opposite is the case. A bank would encourage you to save so easily but not so easy to get loan in other to pursue a dream that would make you wealthy whereas the rich people can have access to all of these saving with little or no stress because they have the collateral and the right connections among the top hierarchy of the banks who could make funds available for them without too much stress eventually the rich get getting richer.

If they don't save, they probably knows the reason why they are not mostly because they are already in debt so they take their money out of the banking system for the fear of direct debit or because they just want to enjoy life to the fullest not knowing what would happen the next day. Its that simple.

Couldn't agree more with you, at some places people struggle to even survive living the life , never crossed in their mind to save money cause yeah they have not any / nothing left.

But here's actually the concept of saving itself is not like these :

You can buy a luxury car with $1,000 back in 1900 ...
Can you imagine if you do save that $1,000 and spend it later today ? Yes you can buy an average bicycle :D

Saving is not just about keeping money these days , practically it should be about putting money into something that could protect you from inflation ..... and the perfect form of this is cryptocurrency for me personally.

Savings is a big thing that helps big with the growth of a country's economy. In my country half the earning will be saved for the future. This can be for the children and for the emergency needs. These days this has decreased a lot, as people just insure and pay premium for health and go with EMI on products that isn't affordable instantly. This has caused the savings go low day by day, but they've a satisfaction. Here the risk is at the times of economic downturn, because we don't know whether we'll be in the job tomorrow.

Not everyone can just cut their cost of living at will.  People have medical expenses that aren't cheap and school in the United States is very expensive if you want to get a degree in something.  Housing costs are continually rising and employers aren't increasing wages of their employees except for high level executives. 

Inflation is one thing what makes prices going high! 
Yea USA will be great Place to live, im sure I would love to live in Miami or new York, if new York then I would like to work at wall street... Lol

But inflation makes First the Property price go high

That's true! 
Speaccially in Uk where is very expensive but wages seems to be stay Same or Even going lower

I have debt but I am still hoping to get paid all of that. I DONT HAVE SAVINGS RIGHT NOW. But of course, I don't want to be like this for life. I want to have a better life. Most people here in our country has a lot of debt. So you are still lucky to have savings.

Partly depends on the culture and also whether policies make it easier/safer to save. It's doable but it can be hard if you're cash-strapped to begin with. Don't Singapore require its citizens to set a part of their income for savings?

When a country has a good number of people who are into savings money, there is a strong probability that its economy is doing well and can easily survive many economic and political catastrophes. That is why saving should have been a priority program for any county as a way to flourish and not just survive. Right now, USA is still not on a good shape as it is remains to be burdened by huge debt and soon this can be a big trap withering its global leadership into thin air. The country's formula of quantitative easing will be coming back to its economy like a big and scary monster.

One must factor in the cost of living, average income and of course, taxes in the country. Those who save much are probably those that are living in countries where the economy is booming and no problems whatsoever occurring. There are quite a handful of people saving more than enough in the midst of poverty in a poor country but that isn't simply enough to lift/pad the stats up. Well I guess it boils down to lifestyle choices as well, too, and not just the whole macroeconomic aspect of saving.

Why does this not surprise me?  People here are addicted to credit cards, keeping up with the Joneses, and living well beyond their means.  I've met too many of them in my lifetime to count--people living from paycheck to paycheck, and yet they're driving huge SUVs, eating out all the time, and have way too much crap in their houses.  It's an insane mindstate.

Luckily I grew out of the temptation to do the above years ago, but it isn't like I don't see the appeal of owning tons of stuff.  When you can't afford it, however.....yeah.

I think this is a generational problem, too.  My grandparents owned a house, but it wasn't anything fancy and they worked all their lives.  The key thing was that they didn't incur tons of debt.  I thought millenials were supposed to be breaking the bad habits of the previous two generations, but who knows.  You can't always believe what you read--and from what I hear those millenials have a lot of student debt which could be keeping them from saving money.

Not all debt is the same. I got a mortgage but LTV is below 50% so I'm far better off with it than renting, even if another housing bubble pops. A capable CS student can pay off $100k in student debt in a few years whereas an art major would likely be totally screwed.

Unfortunately trying to avoid debt when everyone around you is borrowing would be a losing strategy in the long run.

I guess we have another whale or do we call them market makers in the making lol. This issue of inflation is really becoming very terrible in United states and I didn’t know what the government of united states is doing about this, they had better control it before you see the rich tuning to a poor person because really, I agree with sana, how can someone be earning that much, only to be able to have a take home of Such amount of money at the end of the year, and it in directly means that they are just working for their country.

I am not sure that if they ever offer me to live in the united States, I will ever take it, except maybe I’m going there as an expatriate, then I know that all my expenses will be paid in full and I would have nothing to worry about those their expensive accommodation.

Some extremely rough averages for cost of living in the USA, sort of an average between individual and family numbers that I could find...

58000 (example income)
- 10497 (federal income tax)
- 2900 (state income tax, a very rough average, this can vary a LOT)
- 17796 (housing cost, including property tax)
- 1524 (gasoline for car)
- 1116 (car insurance)
- 5796 (car loan payment)
- 1800 (heating and a/c)
- 1200 (internet)
- 540   (water/sewage)
- 6602 (food)
- 960 (cellphone)
- 6924 (healthcare insurance)
- 6170 (healthcare insurance deductible - you must pay this before you get benefits from insurance)

=> 63825 average expenditure

leaving you with a grand total of -5825 usd you can sock away for your glorious poverty stricken retirement.

And the above doesn't include averaged college tuition cost, which you will most definitely need if you want to guarantee a chance at 58000 usd per year salary.

Note median household income in the USA is 61372 (from 2017) so there's approx 150 million people that are making lower than this. And it becomes a little clearer why the savings rate is so low.

Every debit is someones credit.
To get debit someone have to borrow that



Its like chair game with music, when music is stopped Everybody start fighting to get chair.

There is never enough money to cover debt If it was the money will have no value!


No Wonder Why Trump want rate cuts, its a Economic regressions over usa now That's Why.

Rate cut will be the artificial way to boost economy until new regressions.

Savings are basically more when when the spending is lesser, or essentially in places where the cost of living is comparatively lesser.

For example, look at this comparison between Bern(Switzerland) and Washington DC(US): https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Switzerland&country2=United+States&city1=Bern&city2=Washington%2C+DC

The rent is 98% more higher in Washington DC when compared to Bern. So basically, in theory, if you spend 1000$ for rent in Bern, you'd spend 1980$ in Washington DC. So obviously the savings are lower. And besides, due the recession almost every country is in shambles, and there's no room for savings whatsoever.

This is why there are people in US now prefer to live in a smallspace house, you barely can lie straight but they build these kind of houses for people who wants to save.
But then the cost of living is pressuring as if the live in Tokyo specially in big cities in US.  Saving money is hard when you are single and wants to enjoy life, even harder when you have mouths to feed.

But if you live your life like every day is the last, why save?
You can gamble, fuck all the hookers you can find all night and be merry. Its not like you can bring those money to the grave.

Yes but savings are resources.

But sure If You are Young and full of energy Why not to enjoy the life fullest! 


If I can save 1000 month then its a point.
If in can save 100-200 month That's small money to save!

When a country has too many super rich people they also have a lot of poor people, when a country doesn't have too many super rich people than the public is better for it, I believe that is the whole point of this discussion.

Look at Sweden for example, they have IKEA and the dude is not really as rich as you might have imagined. He has places all around the world but not even in top 5 richest people in the world. That is why if you really look at the table you will see that places with poor people have highest number of billionaires and the places with least amount of poor people have the highest savings average.

Swiss people are doing it a bit hardcore tho, I mean saving up %20 of all your money does sound like way too much :D If you are rich enough to save that much maybe there should be more taxes to help other people even more?

Rich people want to enjoy the life the life and not Thinking about money!
That's Why they want to be Rich, poor is Only one who daily Thinking about getting money!

Not very surprising. Switzerland is a libertarian country and the government does not indulge in populism by giving out freebies. The tax rates are not very low, but salaries are high enough to neutralize any impact that comes from the taxes. Also, unlike the neighboring nations such as France and Germany, the Swiss government don't waste their revenue on third world immigrants. The revenue is used for infrastructure development and other sectors within the country, rather than encouraging third world immigration.

Also, the Swiss authorities don't force the citizens to shed their anonymity. Even now they have the CHF 1,000 banknote, which remains as one of the largest denomination banknotes around the world. It is a country where personal freedom and privacy is respected, unlike the case with countries such as the United States where the authorities spy on each and every resident.

I can verify that we Filipinos are not that good in saving.

We are a third world country and despite that we save, most of them went on being spent on things, essential things but sometimes things that don't really are needed and wanted.

I think that would be a 90% spent and 10% saved, though that saved part would be also parted since that 90% would not be enough to be spent.

When you want to do the saving, then you must do it when you get the money. Pick the amount of money that you want to save and separate that money from the other money. If you can do that in monthly, then your saving will be bigger no matter how much money you can save in monthly. You don't have to feel about that is small money or big money, as long as you can do that by monthly, I am sure that in some time, you will amaze of what you've done.

Saving $1000 by monthly will be better, but that is if you have a bigger income. But unfortunately, only people who have a bigger income that can do that. But there are many ways that we can do to start saving.

I think saving will be necessary for your life and don't think that your life will end by today, but you should have a dream that you want to reach so that will motivate you to keep doing what you think is right. Besides that, you will have more power to survive and struggle to get more money for your life.

Did you mean same job in the same place? Or one from USA and one from India. If they are not in the same place, please do account of average living cost/standard as well. You know both the country has a huge difference in living cost. Therefore, it is basically pulling back to the same.
Macroeconomy is a combination of a lot of factors, you can't conclude anything with one or two single factors.

You cannot bring all the money to the grave, but you have to save to some extent where your future will be guaranteed. In some countries, you will see the way the retirees are suffering despite their pension money, it is because they have no saving to hold for their old age.

Imagine that person earning $58000 and able to save just $110000, if he has 20 years to just work, and after that 20 years, he would still be used to that life of spending that $47000, so how do you expect him to meet up or cope after retirement. When you see people save, it is not because of now, but because of future, those hookers will not be there for you in future when you have no money again, and you have to be running round and begging friends to feed your mouth.

No wonder some people in our country go abroad to find job due to a high  annual average of salary in good countries.
When it comes to savings, this really depends on how people handles their finances but what is attractive here is the country with good salary.

I'd like to thank you for sharing this article, I was right that USA gives the highest salary but people are big spenders also. I'm not from USA so I will just do some guessing, maybe the reason why they have a low percentage of savings is because there's a lot of things in USA that is worth spending, so I'd like to believe that living in USA as long as you have a job, you will have a quality life as after all as long as you have a health insurance, you won't have to spend much for medical treatment and your job guarantees you a retirement money if you get old and retired.

when this world is getting better and better the people thought we also need to be richer in this world that's why I think the savings are doing the best in the situation and it also appreciated by each and everyone in this world to make it more useful

I think we're getting there. I see a lot of people in banks doing deposits. Sure many of those are probably not for their accounts but I believe the saving rate is slowly increasing.

Instead of getting data like this we should more or so take some survey because these kind of data can be misleading since we should understand that the average person saves a lot less as it is written down here and it changes everything when we consider the average the rich all summed up together..

This data is highly misleading I think .
The bank deposits cannot identify a local person's Savings .

The place where you spend your income makes a big difference. 20 dollars a day would be a disaster for an American but something normal for someone in India but the key factor is that for 5 dollars you can take your whole family to a restaurant in India and in the USA you'll get a big mac with fries for that.

How much you're spending depends on the economy and your mindset. If you live in a poor country or a country with problems like Greece or Venezuela you won't be saving even if you have a saver's mindset.

I am not sure whether this is a very accurate description, as the purchasing power can very from country to country. A person can retire with $50,000 in rural India, but in Japan even 20 times of that amount may not last for more than one or two decades. So rather than measuring the savings using the same metric, it could have been better to use the purchasing power as the measurement unit.

There ise Other point too

How wealthy u are based of fact the asset You own.

The average Canadian own 40k. Value assets.

This cant be looked in isolation because national debt also puts people in debt despite their personal savings.   For UK I see they are losing money not saving annually, a weak currency might have caused that partly because it helps to raise costs but in any case I think the national debt per person is 74,000 which means a considerable amount of personal savings is required to say you are well off at all.

Same for Japan and USA both have very large amount of debt owed in their name via government,  Norway has a wealth fund which gives a net wealth of well over 50,000 per person.     Also Greece most famously has a giant amount of debt, enough to bankrupt the entire country.
   In theory the government can default on its debt but this situation could easily wipe out personal savings especially where the cash is saved in national currency.   Thats why I mention it as very relevant information to keep track of but this article makes no mention unfortunately.   A dangerous blindspot in our common vision is that alot of us stand to get wiped out in the worst case scenario.

Retirement is a different scenario in many places of the world.

For example, in my country there is a forced retirement fund for everyone, a worker gets less money for their salary and government taxes the company for it and that tax goes to a fund. That fund is used for stuff of course and tries to be even more, they don't even have to put it on stocks or anything, they can make a bridge with that tax and than charge everyone a toll for going through that bridge and still make more profits forever instead of just putting that money into some boring stuff since they are literally the government.

After certain years you earn a chance to start getting paid for it which is your retirement, you can't just get it whenever you want, you have to reach a certain age for it.

Sadly here in the Philippines, a typical Filipino only saves $100 for their future. Some Filipino here are one-day millionaire, when they receive their salary they buy things they don't really need and in the long run they go in debt. Also one of the reason why only few people can really save for their future here is the salary, what they earn is just enough to provide the needs of their family so some goes to abroad just to earn more.

https://www.esquiremag.ph/money/wealth/how-much-is-in-a-typical-filipino-s-bank-balance-a00287-20190208

Average savings depends on how much a person gets salary and how hard the living costs are. So for example, in high end countries people get a decent wage and things do not cost that much, it still costs more than the poor countries but at the same time you are getting much more salary.

For example, if you live in USA and make 10k per month but spend 8k per month that means you are saving 2k per month, now in smaller country people make 300 dollars a month and spend 350 dollars a month (personally those are really my finances) which means they do not have 8k costs which is great but they do not have 10k salary neither so they are still poor. That is why there is such a big difference between poor and rich countries and their savings difference as well.

People with bigger saving also find its difficult too mate, because the bigger they become in standard of living or do I say that the higher they earn, the higher their responsibility grows. I remember when  I started earning salary, if I convert it from my countries' money to usd, it was around 50 usd, as an office assistant, and I wished to save from it but could not save, and I prayed within myself that if I can  just earn a little higher, I will be able to save.

I got a better job of information desk office, and I started earning $200, still, responsibility became higher and found out it was still same as I started and everything I tried dint work, I later got another offer and became a manger where I started earning $2000, I tried to still plan on this and nothing much again, I realize that the higher you earn the more your responsibility become, to your family and to people around you.

@OP I think that you read the article wrong it is US citizens who has a higher household saving compared to Canadians. Here is the quote written in the article you provided.


Given that the US citizens have a higher annual income there is no doubt that they are saving more money compared to Canadians. It's more about the income they are receiving rather than how they spend their money since they have closely a similar market and the prices aren't that any different I would say that this is not about their standard of living as well.

In my opinion the system is working as intended, if most people knew how to manage their money then it will not be so easy for businesses around the world to sell stuff that no one really needs and this could probably slow down the economy, they do not want people to take rational decisions with their money and they want them to act impulsively, this is why there is such a divide among people with some people having lots of savings and most people having no savings at all.

I can attest to this but eventually you can really able to save up.Its just a matter of strict money management but it wont really be that easy.When you do earn more the expense would go into the same way.I had already experienced it out which its hard to make adjustments when you are already got used to it. ;D

Savings will just act like a spare money or something left into your current lifestyle.Average savings on each country would really be different and there were lots of
factors that do mainly affects it.

Nobody is mentioning that the EURO by order of their central bank is dictating that negative interest rates are enacted.   How exactly is anyone to save anymore, its practically outlawed by the nonsense ongoing in economies politics.    This is how I think we are in finance and macro ecomomic terms:

https://i.imgur.com/Zg2FqbE.png (https://giphy.com/gifs/form-z9AUvhAEiXOqA)

Savings of every country will always depend on their economic status in which the richest and the strongest economy will always be the biggest in savings but the poorest country will be mostly no savings at all because mostly buried in World Bank debt.

It will be impossible to save money with the level of inflation that we have everywhere now in the country, if government really wants their citizens to be able to save, they need to cut down the rate of inflation from the cost of building to selling of things in the market, I live in a country where someone would purchase something for 1 usd and then sell it for $100, is that not greed?

How can the money be enough wen someone who earns $50 would think that he cannot afford it meanwhile the real value would have been enough for him to afford it and even save enough change in the bank. The control must start from their first if we really are to get it right in this aspect of savings otherwise, many people will just keep living in debt.

It is obvious that what the governments fear the most is a recession, so they are doing everything that they can to accelerate the economy and that is why they are basically outlawing saving because they want people to spend their money, in my country things are even worse, recently a small tax to savings has been enacted, people are complaining that the government is greedy and they just want money and while they may be right I think the real reason is that they want to incentivize people to spend their money and to not save.

Well.. I have a doubt regarding the methodology... Do they take the mean savings or the median savings? My opinion is that median will be a figure closer to the reality when compared to the mean. Because mean can get impacted by high values along the outliers. For example, a single billionaire with a savings of $100 million per month can singlehandedly alter the country wide values.

Even there will be huge difference on the pay for Indians vs Americans when both living in USA at the moment.This is why most companies hiring people from India.

I would expect there's a distinction to be made here between different types of average. It's not too clear at first glance (at least to me) how the article makes its calculations.

If average savings are above zero, I would assume this refers to the mean average, which is disproportionately impacted by a relatively small number of people who have huge savings. I am making assumptions here, but I do think that the majority of people are in debt. If you took median average instead, i.e. the savings of someone who has 50% of people with more savings than them and 50% of people with less, then that person would be below zero, i.e. be in debt.

As a general point I think that different types of average should be used in different circumstances, and ideally when one is used the others should be quoted as well. Otherwise simple use of the mean average can be used to lead people into false inferences, in this case that most people have a small amount of savings, when in all likelihood most people are actually in debt and a small number of people who have huge savings pull the mean average up above zero.

I do not appreciate countries with high savings. because that will slow commodity trading and the country's economy will be hard to thrive.
Like Americans, they really know how to use money properly and make money always create value.

Of course this is no doubt why many developed countries occupy the above positions, because we can already understand that the average mindset of the person has been formed. Not like people in developing countries, they even struggle to get money just for tomorrow, they didn't have to think about savings anymore.

   Cnut237 your observation is amazing. I totally agree with you! Most people are in debt, but with small people who have huge savings are rising the statistic over zero. Article
does not show how they get calculation, and what parameters they used for that.
   Generally speaking majority of the people is in debt, there is no doubt in that. Is there a chance for that to be changed in the future? That`s the right question to ask here!

I hope there's a chance that inequality can be reduced, but trends suggest that it has been worsening dramatically over the last few decades. There's a good book about this, 'Capital in the 21st Century' by Thomas Piketty. There's a brief summary with a few key charts here: https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequality-story-in-six-charts

Also the World Inequality Database provides a lot of good information: https://wid.world/

Here's a good example. It's slightly exaggerated (because the axis doesn't start at 0%), but the trend is clear.
https://i.imgur.com/mwpp1Zp.png

You mean that they are hiring Indians in order to cut the salary that they pay or what? Because, there is a hidden fact that they work with an Indian person does not mean that the Indians too will not spend as much as the American citizens is spending since it involves the Indian man living in the United States.

If it was an online job, we could say that it is justifiable because the standard of living in India will be different from the standard of living in the United states, but if they are both working in the United states, what is applicable to the American citizen there is what is also applicable to the Indian citizen there too because they are both under the same influence and under the same government. From what you said, this is what I could actually deduce, regardless of I didn’t get your point completely.

Unfortunately i didn't see the countries from Africa continent and most of the countries on the list dominated the countries from Europe and America continent and maybe one of the caused why African are excluded because still dominated by poor countries so none of them can be able on the list and from Asia too if i'm not mistaken only three countries can be the top 30 position for average personal amount of savings statistics

Africa is rich in natural resources and many of the countries (such as Angola, Nigeria and Gabon) earn huge amount of revenues every year from the petroleum and natural gas exports. But this money almost never reaches the common people. A very large fraction is taken out of the continent and deposited in tax heavens such as Switzerland and Channel islands, while the people still live in abject poverty.

My country can't relate... I don't even expect my country to be on the list knowing the situation of most individuals here. It's easy for people in those country to save money because they're already developed. While my country is in the third world, we're still struggling hard. Though we experienced it before in our history, having equal value to usd...

Spending too much is not necessarily one way to help the economy go up. Americans are not sure to use all their money to invest, so we cannot say that the US economy is strong because people do not have the habit of saving much cash.
as in Switzerland, they are the country with the highest per capita saving in the world (19.03%) but it has remained a very high GDP country in recent years and their economy has also increased. very developed in the service - tourism segment.

It may not be accurate to say that those living in developed nations are able to save more than those who live in the third world. Take the case of Japan for example. The living expenses are so high, that young couples are being forced to delay child bearing. On the other hand, the living expenses can be more tolerable in the developing world.

My country has a similar situation. A huge amount of natural resources and at the same time, the majority of the population lives very poorly. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger every year.

I think $ 2900 is too huge for average wage for Asian. maybe even just 10% of it all. but otherwise i believe every country has poor people. and also many people still didnt know how to do investment. for leftgirly what you said thats is true but i think its not thread started want talking about . its just compare average minimum every country .

Maybe people are hard to save because they really need money for their life. Like above me said, sometimes people only eat once in a day because they cannot save more money. They still search for more jobs for money, and they don't even think about saving some money. But that is not all of them, and I believe some of them still trying to save their money even for the small money. We could only see people can saving once they can fill all their needs, and they still have money. But for the rest of them, I think they cannot do that because they don't have money.

Savings is not always beneficial for economical growth. National Income is defined as sum total of consumption and savings i.e. Y = C + S.
Now suppose there is increase in income, the additional income could be either saved or spent. If it is saved then marginal propensity to save will increase which means no economic activity has been undertaken with additional money. Hence, MPS is inversely proportional to economic spending.
So if additional income is always saved then it may act as hindrance for economical growth.

Savings aree beneficial for a country because it is a common sense where most of the people put their savings, it is always in the bank and the bank uses the deposits as a capital to make some investments where they can make a lot of money and because of that strategy, the bank helps the country to sustain the flow of currency so their economy will have a continuous growth.

I think the thing is that US has more sort of live in the moment culture. Most of the people there imagine a life where they would work for 5 days and spend that earned money on the weekend. Moreover as the culture in US is that people generally don't have to give a fortune of money to their offsprings as they think they should earn their. Life on their own. Moreover the government takes care of the retirement benefits to every person who is incapable of earning after a certain age so this I think is the reason why US ranks last on this list of average savings across the globe.

This serves to show the culture surrounding money and saving within different countries. In this day and age, globalization and social media has overtaken the world and materialism manifests in every society. From this information we can gather that the American people clearly live in the moment, however, with such a low average savings, it is blatantly obvious that they do not understand how to plan for emergencies and the curve balls that life will undoubtedly throw at you. Additionally, European countries can be seen doing extremely well in these rankings as their culture is based around providing a good life for their offspring and ensuring their happiness in retirement. The idea of debt in many countries is looked down upon, but this is clearly not the case in the US where the amount of debt is so high that it is a normal thing.

Oops, yes! My bad. I ignored an important assumption in my post. In case of two-sector economy, S = I where I is investment. So yes, when people save money, they either keep it to themselves or keep it in banks. In case they keep money with themselves then it doesn't contribute to economic development but if they deposit it with bank, bank further lend it to others. Here, another concept comes into picture, the concept of Investment Multiplier. When banks lend money, the borrower further give money to someone else, the other person may deposit money into his bank. This way money is back into bank and bank can once again lend the same money to someone else. So, savings do contribute to economic development if it is channelled through banks.

How is Japan at -0.47%?  :o

IMHO these days 20% is still low when saving. The problem is when the cost of living is high, it makes it really hard to save up. And then your saving's value depreciate if you fail to invest it.

Guess only thing we can do is to try to cut away as much non-essentials from our expenses. The world won't end if you don't watch Netflix or drink at Starbucks. Also helps if you can arrange to live with a family member and ask for a "moratorium" - something like not having to pitch in the bills for a few months after landing a job so you can at least set up an emergency fund for yourself.

I don't know how they've made those calculations as I've heard from a credible source that 75% of USA residents don't have $500 until the next month's paycheck. So you could say that they're living paycheck to paycheck.

Here in Brazil, we are certainly in a worse situation than Greece. The current minimum wage is 998 reais, while it should be 4500 reais if it accompanied inflation as it should. The population is all in debt, and the rich continue to accumulate more money.

Maybe you have noticed that the author of this article made a small mistake that really makes the numbers meaningless. The average yearly income is calculated before tax so that 20k USD for some countries is really 10k USD per year. I don't know if it's like that for all countries but I took a few EU countries and the numbers are incorrect.
Example:
Slovakia
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/slovakia/annual-household-income-per-capita

Real yearly income per capita ~8k USD and according to the author of this article it's $22,031 (almost 3 times higher)

Poland ~6k USD and according to the author it's $23,998 (4 times higher)

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/poland/annual-household-income-per-capita

I've been to these countries and I can confirm the data from my links. The average salary is below 15k USD a year. If you add tax you're left with maybe 12k net wage if you're lucky. This makes all the data from the comparison unreal and useless.

I won't be surprised if this is true. Japan is one of the costliest nations to live and the working conditions can be very tough. Meal for two in a mid range restaurant can easily cost $100 in cities such as Tokyo. Rent for a decent apartment can cost $3,000 per month. And remember that the average monthly salary in Japan is considerably lower than that in the United States and the European Union.

Switzerland has  a good personal saving culture which is something worth emulating. Most persons really can't save because of bad spending habits, they keep buying liabilities because they have a credit card. Credit card is one major enemy to a good saving habit, money speaks and want to always be spent, but it takes someone with high financial discipline to avoid debt and save.

the cost to transfer money across the globe is huge when you want to transfer Fiat money, but now with the recent Advent of cryptocurrency technology, it's possible to transfer money across the globe for practically free.

I don't think that this metric is bad for the US citizens.
We need to know where those money go to. Do they shop or do they invest them? If the latter happens, then this is a crucial factor which provides growth to their income.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5183354.msg52436841#msg52436841

If that's the case,then it would be no surprise that they had those percentage.If standards or cots of living is really expensive but the average income doesn't equal to that demand then it will surely give out these figures.

I can attest with that Credit card thing which is really a real story.If you do had this card on your wallet,it do anytime calls you out for you to spend.  ;D

Japan is an OLD society - most people are over 50, it has the highest average age in the world, and the most pensioners.

The rule of thumb is that young people save for their retirement. But old people then draw down and spend their savings as they're retired and too old to work.

So it's possible that young Japanese are saving 10% of their income, but old Japanese are drawing down 5% of their savings. When you get to the stage where the old outnumber the young, then the average across the country is negative.

If we are being harsh here we could easily say the value of savings across the globe is now zero and I will explain how now.   The main reasoning being that each government of which a person might save the currency has debt running into the trillions or a large % of the countrys wealth/productive capacity.   If you were to save the cheques you hope will be paid, it could easily be the case you may never receive the value.   This is partly why we live in such a consumerist society because it is not safe to save.
   The only country I think of immediately where the population has actual savings on average per person would be Norway and this is because for a long time the government has taken the nations oil wealth and not used it for spending or infrastructure 'investment' but saved these funds as a sovereign wealth fund for the nation.   Every citizen of Norway has to their name an average value of about $70,000 in national wealth.   Every other western country citizen has many tens of thousands of debt owing in national debt.
  If people saved gold it may place them partly outside their countries national debt liabilities, I would agree they have some savings but if people save up promissory notes or paper FIAT then they could easily have no savings at all and long term this is the end game.





Its free to speculate but the cost to using Crypto is the variance in the value of each blockchain and whether it will hold that value.   It is an improved situation for many I agree because most people are not transferring large values and % costs are less important to them then absolute fees and the difficulty of operating a bank account with all the problems it can bring for the small household.

This is also a possible explanation. BTW, retirement age has risen in Japan to above 60. From what I have heard, the average retirement age currently stands at 65 years there. It is harsh, although Japan has one of the best human life span across the globe, at 84 years (81 for men, and 87 for women). If we take the average age of entry to the labor market at 25 years (which is a very conservative estimate), a Japanese male can be expected to work for 4 decades non-stop before being allowed to retire. 4 decades of work, in order to get one and half years of pensions doesn't look very attractive for me.

There are tons of people in debt but the calculation is probably including people like warren buffet who has billions of dollars in their bank account, if you calculate the richest 100 people in USA that have money in their account as "savings account" than I am afraid the calculation will be wrong because they have enough money to make 300+ million people positive where as there are people who are in debt in the millions.

Just look at how much school debt there is in USA and you will see that millions of people are sharing a common debt just for school let alone all other things. That is why this calculation is showing how much gap there is between wealthy and the poor instead of showing how much people have in savings on average, of course that is for countries like USA where there is a big wealth gap.

Well, I think this is one of Canada's recession signals. A country that maintains large levels of savings every year will stagnate its economy by not having too many transactions taking place. I guess that Canada will be one of the countries with the first economic crisis if the great economic crisis comes.

Could be the reason. Still, would that really mean that most people wouldn't be able to set aside some savings that the country goes on negative?

This makes me worried about where my country is going to if even an industrialized nation like Japan is at negative savings.


I haven't thought of this but it makes sense. I guess we'll find out if we also see China in a similar negative savings situation since it's also having a rapidly aging population.

US tax and mortgages consume large percentage of the income though they seem to have one of the highest income in the world. US citizen also have a bad spending habit. They get into debt early and pay all the their lives. Their risk taking ability into making more money is lower in US citizens than for foreigners. 

Lucky for those people who lived in first world countries, considerably they have best advantages and benefits that their local companies government or private can offer. Unlike the 3rd world tier countries where the cost of living is high but underwage barely can’t save after retirement.

Quite surprising that USA has the least savings, considering that it has always been known that USA is the place to go if you wan't to earn money. I doubt the accuracy of that article, especially because of the average salary that the USA has which is $47060 (source:  https://www.thebalancecareers.com/average-salary-information-for-us-workers-2060808).

Thats not even enough to buy a fraction of bitcoin.

Most of the people that have debts stays in debt because they are paying their debts by debts, thati is the reason too why they can't make any savings. They are spending more than they earn, the worst case scenario for them is living on the streets asking for money because they are always being a happy-go-lucky individual who is an epicurean. In the end, they will blame it all to the Government.

They will start saying claptraps like the Government are not doing anything for the lack in job oppotunities, as a result, the Government will start to have debts also on other countries because their citizens are all selfish idiots.

Not all is able to save, in the world full of earthly things and bills it is really tempted not to save or at least to have emergency fund. We must change now if we wanted to have a much comfortable life. USA and other Europeans country are still better way to have savings, unlike i n some Asian countries and third world countries that are only trying to survive living daily due to different area minimum wages plus the tax and inflation that are inevitable nowadays. Some are unable to be insured or even got their own medical plans sue to financial crisis. So be thankful those countries who are still able to save since many people are not, even they wanted too.

It is not the government's fault if its people go in debt. You already said that they are living too much base on what they can only earn. On the other hand if the government will have debt in other countries, it will have bad effects in the future if the money was only used for corruption not for the country's benefit.

certainly those who have a high amount of savings are those who live in developed countries. whereas those living in third countries are largely unable to save because the money is used up to meet their daily needs. because of low per capita income and also high inflation. cause they can't save their money. lucky people who live in developed countries. they can have a lot of savings.

I highly doubt the statistics behind those numbers, is that a typo? Comparing those values thats like $2,900 vs $48,000. How can Japanese have more savings than the Americans when the average salary for the US market is much higher?

The Japanese are truly innovative people and probably why they are one of the first to adopt bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

I think they are intelligent to spin the money not only to be saved and it will not add more to their money. Maybe they are after the payday of the real world work money they use to invest anywhere it so that the money spins and increases a lot. Not just saving and being drain by bank interest only but they are clever.

You should not judge it based on salary, they might have more salary than japan, but the cost of living might be lower in Japan than US which we know how extremely expensive that living in the United states could be.

The statistic may not be wrong really because I have seen many countries there where I have some friends that are seriously complaining of payment so much for living in the country, and the thing that kills them more is taxing, some countries tax is very high that when they pay you your salary, the amount that is leaving for tax is more than 30 percent of the salary which is very bad. My country is even worst, tax is not imposed on us, but the cost of living is far high that what we learn which makes it difficult for us to be able to save.

There is no denying the rich are getting richer but people are also guilty of this, there is not a person I know that has any significant savings and yet they spend their money in a bunch of stuff they do not really need and yet they complain to me all the time about how they are short on cash, people need to stop spending that much in useless stuff, there is nothing wrong with spending but try to get the most for your money, and then once you have some savings you should invest in gold or bitcoin.

indeed that turning money you have can be very much but in cryptocurrency no one can guarantee profit, you can get a loss if you can't control your patience and are easily affected by bad news and selling your assets at cheap prices can make you lose and no profit.

Yes you are correct and what does the government have to so?  More taxes!!  More taxes coming

yes because the tax in America is very high I guess or they charge taxes on anything, there are people who say you will be taxed when trading.
in my opinion it's very bad, because in trading you may not necessarily get money, in contrast to jobs that are sure to get a salary every month.

I'm around $5,000 in debt, started using credit cards to keep my money in Crypto. Didn't have a job, so that should lower the average a bit. But I'm getting there and hopefully in a few months I could start saving again. As far as the coins I have, they're pretty much worthless. Not even enough volume for anything.

That tells how bad their economy really is.
I hear stories from people there. They might be the strongest country as some would say it but people who live in it are not that rich.
They have to work so hard just to make a little money and then they need to pay a lot of bills including insurance and mortgage.
Some of them just migrates in Asia when they retire.
Their money in exchange for countries there is better and they could live in peace.
$2000 is a lot when you are in a different country. That is monthly.

How savings are evaluated is very important. If people do that with Bitcoin, things can be different. If Bitcoin is seen as an investment tool, a new path for subcoins can be opened. We dream of such a new subcoin purchase. How will the future be shaped?

This is really sad to know that you are in debt of such a big amount. If you have a collection of useless coins, I will suggest you to sell them off or simply get rid of them and try to earn bitcoin or worthy altcoins that have nice history of profits. You shall also search for some day job. Try working at some restaurant, in office etc. in order to at least earn something that you can invest into big coins and make money. 

Comparatively what an average saves from an Asian country seems to be higher than the USA standard. Though USA is rated to be the first world country the saving pattern doesn't looks to be upto the level. I believe Westerners prefer investing than savings. Due to hard inflation across the globe, more crypto people have begun to save in terms of bitcoin to limit the loss out of the inflation.

I think the taxes is just the same compared to other developed countries and any developed countries usually charges tremendous amount of taxes but if it's used for the good of their citizens it's not a problem. but it does make sense that people could be avoiding to save because taxes. However, being taxed for trading profit is normal in my opinion.

trade is an activity, so it is natural to become a tax object by the government. I am surprised that many people avoid tax, even though they enjoy the tax facilities. therefore there must be a synergy between the community and the government to jointly develop their country through taxes, and provide strict penalties for corruptors

Not just they believe in investing but also they have high taxes. They pay a lot of taxes and government spends them on poor people and also on the ones who are paying them. Even if they are not saving a lot, most of the times they are getting enough from government to live a life above poverty line. The second thing i.e. investing it works great for them. In this way they let their money double. In Asia governments often do not have good control over taxes so people don’t pay them and save money.

You should check third world country values in order to make an average. I don't think African people earn that much because of their issues. Another thing is that American people spend more than Asian people so it would be nice to see an average according to continent.

Of the people I know most are hand to mouth but some have assets they could get rid of if necessary. I doubt many of them could survive a major hit or being without work for more than a few weeks.

The Man wants you to dig yourself into a hole so deep you'll never quite be able to get out of it but also not become a full on burden and many are happy to oblige. I've never been that way myself and would rather go without than stretch myself. 

The lack of savings is something that we are seeing all around the world as that study demonstrates, and this has to do with the ideas people have about what it means to be happy, many believe that in order to be happy you need to spend money and that you need to always have the latest gadget and the newest smart phone and that if you don't then you are a loser, also many people have the attitude that you only live once and that you need to enjoy your life as much as possible.

They do not really understand that if you hold your finances in check and that you save over the long term not only you are going to have more of that stuff but you are going to be able to retire early and in a more comfortable manner.

Thats bs, your kids may have been on the life support before they even get into the world, you think would care about any single men to commit themselves? I’m telling you, all your kids would pay the debt, they may not pay it by sending cash to the govt, but indirectly, think of the shrinking salary, loss of job opportunity, lower living standard, lesser child support funding, lesser medical support, the list goes on, that’s the price your kids gonna pay, you may not even know what I’m talking about.

Yeah, it is pretty sad, but I learned my lesson. I do have a crappy job and I try to put $100 a week into Bitcoin. I do have many crappy coins, but they are literally not worth the time and effort. The time would be better spent working an extra hour here and there, or not taking a lunch break.

With respect to continents the average spending varies. When it comes to Africa the earnings were low, when compared to other continent earning. Africa has got an outlook as countries with full of poverty and other economic issues. This is true, but the same is present with Asian and Western countries.