Big Reasons Why Many Families Are Feeling Extreme Financial Stress

[Hydrogen]

When the cost of living rises faster than paychecks do year after year, eventually that becomes a very big problem.  For quite some time I have been writing about the shrinking middle class, and one of the biggest culprits is inflation.  Every month, tens of millions of American families struggle to pay the bills, and most of them don’t even understand the economic forces that are putting so much pressure on them.  The United States never had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflation until the debt-based Federal Reserve system was introduced in 1913.  Since that time, we have had non-stop inflation and the U.S. dollar has lost more than 98 percent of its value.  If our paychecks were increasing faster than inflation this wouldn’t be a problem, but in recent years this has definitely not been the case for most Americans.

And unfortunately inflation is starting to accelerate once again.  In fact, it is being reported that inflation rose at the fastest pace in four years in January…

The prices Americans pay for goods and services surged in January by the largest amount in four years, mostly reflecting a rebound in the cost of gasoline that’s taking a bigger chunk out of household incomes.

The consumer price index, or cost of living, rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.6% in January, the government said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, our incomes have been incredibly stagnant.   In fact, we just learned that median household income did not go up at all during 2016.

This is one of the reasons why we consistently see families fall out of the middle class month after month.  Even if you keep the same job year after year, your standard of living is going to steadily go down unless your pay goes up.

The things that we all spend money on month after month just keep going up in price.  I am talking about food, housing, medical care and other essentials.  If there is one thing that we can always count on, it is the fact that things are going to cost more tomorrow than they do today.

Let’s talk about food for a moment.  Whenever I go to the grocery store, I am almost always shocked.  I still remember a time when I could get everything that I needed for an entire week for about 20 bucks, but these days you can’t even fill up one cart for 100 dollars.

That is because food prices have been rising aggressively for many years.  The following is a list that was posted on The Economic Policy Journal that shows how much some food and grocery items have increased over the past decade…

1. Tobacco and smoking products

-Price increase: 90.4%

2. Margarine

-Price increase: 63.6%

3. Uncooked ground beef

-Price increase: 46.3%

4. Shelf stable fish and seafood
-Price increase: 45.0%

5. Prescription drugs
-Price increase: 43.5%

6. Rice, pasta, cornmeal
-Price increase: 40.3%

7. Bread
-Price increase: 38.9%

8. Snacks
-Price increase: 38.4%

9. Miscellaneous poultry including turkey
-Price increase: 37.0%

10. Apples
-Price increase: 36.6%

11. Frankfurters
-Price increase: 35.8%

12. Canned vegetables
-Price increase: 35.3%

13. Salt and other seasonings and spices
-Price increase: 34.0%

14. Miscellaneous fats and oils including peanut butter
-Price increase: 34.0%

15. Miscellaneous processed fruits and vegetables including dried
-Price increase: 33.7%

16. Bacon and related products
-Price increase: 33.2%

17. Fresh whole chicken
-Price increase: 32.5%

18. Cakes, cupcakes, and cookies
-Price increase: 32.1%

19. Flour and prepared flour mixes
-Price increase: 32.1%

20. Canned fruits
-Price increase: 32.0%

And thanks to out of control government spending and reckless manipulation by the Federal Reserve, we have come to a time when inflation is starting to accelerate once again.

According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were being used the government would be telling us that inflation is rising at a 6 percent annual rate for the first time since 2011.

At the same time, evidence is mounting that U.S. consumers are simply tapped out.  Previously, I have explained that interest rates are going up, consumer bankruptcies are rising, and lending standards for consumers are really tightening up.

All of those are things we would expect to see if a new recession was starting.

And today we learned that the number of Americans refinancing their homes has fallen to the lowest level that we have seen since 2009…

A slowdown in refinancing pulled down the total mortgage application volume last week as changes to certain government-loan programs made refinances less lucrative. Refinance volume now stands at its lowest level since June 2009.

If you will remember, we also saw a slowdown in mortgage refinancing just before the great financial crisis of 2008.

For mortgage applications overall, they are now down almost 31 percent from where they were a year ago…

Total mortgage application volume fell 3.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis last week from the previous week, and are nearly 31 percent lower than the same week a year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

A 31 percent decline in a single year is catastrophic.

If this continues, it won’t be too long before everyone is talking about a new housing crash.

And we also learned this week that FHA mortgage delinquencies increased during the fourth quarter “for the first time since 2006”…

Federal Housing Administration mortgage delinquencies jumped in the fourth quarter for the first time since 2006, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday. The FHA insures low down-payment loans and is a favorite among first-time homebuyers.

The seasonally adjusted FHA delinquency rate increased to 9.02 percent in the fourth quarter from 8.3 percent in the third quarter, MBA data show.

So many things are happening right now that we have not seen happen in many years, but most people are choosing not to see the red flags that are popping up all around us.

None of our long-term economic problems have been fixed.  And even though Donald Trump won the election, the truth is that our economy is in the worst shape it has been since the last financial crisis.  I continue to encourage all of my readers to get prepared for very hard times, but just like back in 2007 we are experiencing a wave of tremendous optimism right now and most people think that the party can somehow continue indefinitely.

Whether Donald Trump won the election or not, the truth is that a major economic downturn was going to come anyway.  You see, Donald Trump is not some magician that can just wave a wand and somehow make the consequences of decades of very foolish decisions instantly disappear.

We have been on the biggest debt binge in human history, and there is going to be a great price to pay when this immense debt bubble finally bursts.

Unfortunately, most people are not going to acknowledge the truth until it is too late.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/this-is-one-of-the-big-reasons-why-so-many-families-are-feeling-extreme-financial-stress

...

I think the main reason Trump won the election was Trump being the only candidate willing to address these issues.

These types of points relating to state driven policy failure and wealth inequality, regularly fall outside the mainstream media talking points and the degree of knowledge one can obtain by exclusively following mainstream sources.

Every other politician I've seen would have swept these issues under a rug and feigned ignorance until the next recession.

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[Bionicgalaxy]

Based on my experience that many families are feeling extreme financial stress because nowadays it's hard to find a stable job and a job with a big salary, and it's hard to earn money. Many families have a financial stress because they purchase too much they don't know how to budget their own money that's why it leads to financial stress.

[Amph]

it's strange that they have so high inflation when the inflation reported is not increasing in comparison with the previous years

inflation currently it's at its lowest level for now in 2017, this is not true for all country, turkey have the highest it seems

it must be said if that price increase is due to the USD losing its purchase power, or those are really price that were incresed by vendors of those products

[Carlsen]

I think it's a combination of many factors whyfamilies have financial stress.
Things get more expensive, income gets lower, inflation increases.
But many people are not very competent in how to handle their money as well.
I mean not only in matters of investment, I mean the things they buy which are not necessary.

[Yuuto]

I think that nobody should ever start a family, for example, have kids without proper preparation.
I would have never made my wife/girlfriend pregnant if I could not find decent, stable job with salary that is able to feed my whole family.

I cant understand people that engage themself into family life, but they are not really ready for that, your source of income needs to cover up all your and your family bills.

[Hydrogen]

Based on my experience that many families are feeling extreme financial stress because nowadays it's hard to find a stable job and a job with a big salary, and it's hard to earn money. Many families have a financial stress because they purchase too much they don't know how to budget their own money that's why it leads to financial stress.

I don't know about other countries but in the united states, general motors was the largest employer in the 1950's. Today Wal Mart is the largest employer. We've essentially exchanged high paying general motors jobs for low paying wal mart jobs. Wage cuts have to do with the business sector largely retooling jobs to require less specialized skill, making employees easier to replace. It also has to do with increases in wage and wealthy inequality where CEO's are paid $9,000 an hour and most employees are paid $7 an hour. Not because CEO's deserve a pay raise, but rather due to CEO's receiving all the pay raises that were supposed to do to the poor and middle class, whose wage growth has flatlined over the past few decades.

Automation of jobs and offshoring/outsourcing have also taken a large chunk of the job market. Gains in productivity have not trickled down past the wealthy who increasingly run businesses more like the blood diamond trade in africa, than anything resembling a fair or equal arrangement.

The collective lack of financial intelligence may be linked to ever declining educational standards. Much of pop culture encourages materialism and people spending their way into debt. The high taxes, lack of wage growth and increasing living expenses almost seemed designed to guarantee everyone ends up poor sooner or later. Everyone except the super rich.

The wealthiest people in the world probably fear the next apple or google. They're afraid of people young, hungry and smart toppling them from their place at the top of the food chain. And so maybe they do work hard to prevent that from happening by controlling the media, education, celebrities and others to convince people things that are really good are really bad.

it's strange that they have so high inflation when the inflation reported is not increasing in comparison with the previous years

inflation currently it's at its lowest level for now in 2017, this is not true for all country, turkey have the highest it seems

it must be said if that price increase is due to the USD losing its purchase power, or those are really price that were incresed by vendors of those products

Food price inflation is due to water scarcity correlated with drought, as far as I know. When the price of water increases, it affects everything. Food price hikes aren't due to currency inflation. Although inflation and living expenses have grown at a faster pace than wages, which should be very concerning, yet somehow the media never reports on it anymore even though they did report on it back around 2008.

So yeah, climate change is probably the biggest factor for food price hikes. Climate change is caused by 80% of the world's natural forests being harvested. Trees store (sequester) carbon. Forests act as giant carbon emission sucking machines. The leaves of plants and trees also evaporate water which causes rain. Cutting down forests leads to less evaporated water, leading to drought and rainfall decrease.

There is scientific info relating to deforestation in australia and brazil leading to drought there. The harvesting of forests is also linked to decrease ability to store and contain carbon, which leads to higher average yearly temperatures.

[bamboylee]

That is in USA. It is worse in my country where employees are underpaid, overworked and inflation on commodities and food are getting higher and higher by day. It is hard to survive even when both parents have jobs.

[jhenfelipe]

Even I'm not from U.S., I agree in the statements on the blog. For me inflation is the number one reason of families being financially stressed, regardless of being unemployed. Of course if people are unemployed, no.one reason for them is because they don't have a job or a stable job to support their needs.

That's correct that things are going to cost more tomorrow than they do today. Price of goods and services are increasing xx number of times per year but salary/income is mostly steady. It's not balance at all.

[Mometaskers]

I don't live in the US but yeah, I saw a vid that says the wage there has stagnated. It's the same where I live so I suppose it's the same in most countries. Every fuckin time there are talks of wage increase there are threats that there would be massive layoffs, and so on and so forth. Meanwhile the price of goods keep on rising, even on a monthly basis. Wage hikes happen only every few years or so and then not much. How are they expecting us to live then?

[olushakes]

Based on the response on what I have read, it seems that the world economy is in turmoil including where I stay as the price of basic commodities have sky rocked on am average of 18% whereas minimum wage is still constant and this is what we are facing in this country and its getting so bad that the middle class is almost eradicated and the rich continues to get richer while the poor gets poorer.

[darthmaul]

I think there is one more reason why family are getting extreme stress, that includes "bad finance management". Many of them do not thinking before buying anything. If I don't need something which is part of leisure then why should even buy it? Cost reduction can be done at many places but families go about to spend bucks to show off. This should nohave happen they should really think about that. Products will get costlier and so as to expenses made by us.

[xuan87]

Based on the response on what I have read, it seems that the world economy is in turmoil including where I stay as the price of basic commodities have sky rocked on am average of 18% whereas minimum wage is still constant and this is what we are facing in this country and its getting so bad that the middle class is almost eradicated and the rich continues to get richer while the poor gets poorer.

My country also feels the same, even though the inflation rate is not too high but the effect of it really burden my family economics and it getting worse by the government corruption and there are a lot of unemployment which lead to a lot of people willing to work with cheap salary rather than become unemployment, and it don't seems going to get better

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I think that nobody should ever start a family, for example, have kids without proper preparation.
I would have never made my wife/girlfriend pregnant if I could not find decent, stable job with salary that is able to feed my whole family.

I cant understand people that engage themself into family life, but they are not really ready for that, your source of income needs to cover up all your and your family bills.

OMG...no, people should not sire children unless they are READY to, and I estimate that 75% of people shouldn't have been fucking born, and that includes me.  Two drug addicts should never conceive, because you're stacking the deck so far against the kid it isn't funny.  Humanity is in trouble and has been for a long ass time.

And yeah, the living beyond one's means.  Banks and credit card companies feed into people's stupidity and greed, and people get in trouble.  If earth got obliterated by a meteor shower it'd be the best thing to ever happen to our species.

[audaciousbeing]

Your points are very valid and its unfortunate that its not only happening in America but also in most countries of the world and that is a testimony to the fact that the economic handlers of the world have failed woefully to the extent that it becomes a universal phenomenon that the middle class is gradually being eliminated from the social economic system. The most painful is they will still continue to chun out policies that will not even improve the current scenerio.

[btc_angela]

Based on the response on what I have read, it seems that the world economy is in turmoil including where I stay as the price of basic commodities have sky rocked on am average of 18% whereas minimum wage is still constant and this is what we are facing in this country and its getting so bad that the middle class is almost eradicated and the rich continues to get richer while the poor gets poorer.

You don't need read the response here, its all over the world economy has been in downward spiral since the 70's. Middle class family now is barely surviving. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger. China and Japan had already seen what to bring about if they can't control the population so that they implement 1 child policy. Look at their economy, they are first rate country now because of this implementation. Because if their population continue to boom then the people and the economy will suffer.

[Amph]

it's strange that they have so high inflation when the inflation reported is not increasing in comparison with the previous years

inflation currently it's at its lowest level for now in 2017, this is not true for all country, turkey have the highest it seems

it must be said if that price increase is due to the USD losing its purchase power, or those are really price that were incresed by vendors of those products

Food price inflation is due to water scarcity correlated with drought, as far as I know. When the price of water increases, it affects everything. Food price hikes aren't due to currency inflation. Although inflation and living expenses have grown at a faster pace than wages, which should be very concerning, yet somehow the media never reports on it anymore even though they did report on it back around 2008.

So yeah, climate change is probably the biggest factor for food price hikes. Climate change is caused by 80% of the world's natural forests being harvested. Trees store (sequester) carbon. Forests act as giant carbon emission sucking machines. The leaves of plants and trees also evaporate water which causes rain. Cutting down forests leads to less evaporated water, leading to drought and rainfall decrease.

There is scientific info relating to deforestation in australia and brazil leading to drought there. The harvesting of forests is also linked to decrease ability to store and contain carbon, which leads to higher average yearly temperatures.

good to hear about this, i didn't know the impact of cutting down the forest was so heavy on the ambient, i was expecting them to replace the trees with some that can grow much faster and do not require babysitting for many years

apparently they are still doing that heavy deforestation on amazon forest, i thought the amazon forest was protected already and was not possibile for anyone to keep cutting down the trees

if all this is connected. could be that they are cutting down all thoe trees on purpose just to force people to spend more of their money? or just another conspiracy....

[rajasumi3]

There is family stress all over the globe as you have quoted and through my experience is that people are not getting too much money through their work,and the price of commodities is increasing day by day ,as it may sound harsh that richer are becoming more and more richer,not paying the amount that should be paid to the employees as salary, rather keeping it with them as profit and becoming millionaires with it.

[bering]

low income, expensive price for daily needs, the high cost of education because high inflation will always be the main problem for every families in the world including US especially for poor families they always be thinking how to feed their families daily even With uncertain income that's why they will feeling Financial Stress everyday however

[Xester]

When the cost of living rises faster than paychecks do year after year, eventually that becomes a very big problem.  For quite some time I have been writing about the shrinking middle class, and one of the biggest culprits is inflation.  Every month, tens of millions of American families struggle to pay the bills, and most of them don’t even understand the economic forces that are putting so much pressure on them.  The United States never had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflation until the debt-based Federal Reserve system was introduced in 1913.  Since that time, we have had non-stop inflation and the U.S. dollar has lost more than 98 percent of its value.  If our paychecks were increasing faster than inflation this wouldn’t be a problem, but in recent years this has definitely not been the case for most Americans.

And unfortunately inflation is starting to accelerate once again.  In fact, it is being reported that inflation rose at the fastest pace in four years in January…

The prices Americans pay for goods and services surged in January by the largest amount in four years, mostly reflecting a rebound in the cost of gasoline that’s taking a bigger chunk out of household incomes.

The consumer price index, or cost of living, rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.6% in January, the government said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, our incomes have been incredibly stagnant.   In fact, we just learned that median household income did not go up at all during 2016.

This is one of the reasons why we consistently see families fall out of the middle class month after month.  Even if you keep the same job year after year, your standard of living is going to steadily go down unless your pay goes up.

The things that we all spend money on month after month just keep going up in price.  I am talking about food, housing, medical care and other essentials.  If there is one thing that we can always count on, it is the fact that things are going to cost more tomorrow than they do today.

Let’s talk about food for a moment.  Whenever I go to the grocery store, I am almost always shocked.  I still remember a time when I could get everything that I needed for an entire week for about 20 bucks, but these days you can’t even fill up one cart for 100 dollars.

That is because food prices have been rising aggressively for many years.  The following is a list that was posted on The Economic Policy Journal that shows how much some food and grocery items have increased over the past decade…

1. Tobacco and smoking products

-Price increase: 90.4%

2. Margarine

-Price increase: 63.6%

3. Uncooked ground beef

-Price increase: 46.3%

4. Shelf stable fish and seafood
-Price increase: 45.0%

5. Prescription drugs
-Price increase: 43.5%

6. Rice, pasta, cornmeal
-Price increase: 40.3%

7. Bread
-Price increase: 38.9%

8. Snacks
-Price increase: 38.4%

9. Miscellaneous poultry including turkey
-Price increase: 37.0%

10. Apples
-Price increase: 36.6%

11. Frankfurters
-Price increase: 35.8%

12. Canned vegetables
-Price increase: 35.3%

13. Salt and other seasonings and spices
-Price increase: 34.0%

14. Miscellaneous fats and oils including peanut butter
-Price increase: 34.0%

15. Miscellaneous processed fruits and vegetables including dried
-Price increase: 33.7%

16. Bacon and related products
-Price increase: 33.2%

17. Fresh whole chicken
-Price increase: 32.5%

18. Cakes, cupcakes, and cookies
-Price increase: 32.1%

19. Flour and prepared flour mixes
-Price increase: 32.1%

20. Canned fruits
-Price increase: 32.0%

And thanks to out of control government spending and reckless manipulation by the Federal Reserve, we have come to a time when inflation is starting to accelerate once again.

According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were being used the government would be telling us that inflation is rising at a 6 percent annual rate for the first time since 2011.

At the same time, evidence is mounting that U.S. consumers are simply tapped out.  Previously, I have explained that interest rates are going up, consumer bankruptcies are rising, and lending standards for consumers are really tightening up.

All of those are things we would expect to see if a new recession was starting.

And today we learned that the number of Americans refinancing their homes has fallen to the lowest level that we have seen since 2009…

A slowdown in refinancing pulled down the total mortgage application volume last week as changes to certain government-loan programs made refinances less lucrative. Refinance volume now stands at its lowest level since June 2009.

If you will remember, we also saw a slowdown in mortgage refinancing just before the great financial crisis of 2008.

For mortgage applications overall, they are now down almost 31 percent from where they were a year ago…

Total mortgage application volume fell 3.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis last week from the previous week, and are nearly 31 percent lower than the same week a year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

A 31 percent decline in a single year is catastrophic.

If this continues, it won’t be too long before everyone is talking about a new housing crash.

And we also learned this week that FHA mortgage delinquencies increased during the fourth quarter “for the first time since 2006”…

Federal Housing Administration mortgage delinquencies jumped in the fourth quarter for the first time since 2006, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday. The FHA insures low down-payment loans and is a favorite among first-time homebuyers.

The seasonally adjusted FHA delinquency rate increased to 9.02 percent in the fourth quarter from 8.3 percent in the third quarter, MBA data show.

So many things are happening right now that we have not seen happen in many years, but most people are choosing not to see the red flags that are popping up all around us.

None of our long-term economic problems have been fixed.  And even though Donald Trump won the election, the truth is that our economy is in the worst shape it has been since the last financial crisis.  I continue to encourage all of my readers to get prepared for very hard times, but just like back in 2007 we are experiencing a wave of tremendous optimism right now and most people think that the party can somehow continue indefinitely.

Whether Donald Trump won the election or not, the truth is that a major economic downturn was going to come anyway.  You see, Donald Trump is not some magician that can just wave a wand and somehow make the consequences of decades of very foolish decisions instantly disappear.

We have been on the biggest debt binge in human history, and there is going to be a great price to pay when this immense debt bubble finally bursts.

Unfortunately, most people are not going to acknowledge the truth until it is too late.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/this-is-one-of-the-big-reasons-why-so-many-families-are-feeling-extreme-financial-stress

...

I think the main reason Trump won the election was Trump being the only candidate willing to address these issues.

These types of points relating to state driven policy failure and wealth inequality, regularly fall outside the mainstream media talking points and the degree of knowledge one can obtain by exclusively following mainstream sources.

Every other politician I've seen would have swept these issues under a rug and feigned ignorance until the next recession.

The reason why America is having a hard time earning money from their salary and the increase was not always implemented and only some few are benefitting to the huge pay. Many are suffering from low income and from high priced goods and services and the reason is because of the illegal immigrants entering the country and enjoying the salary which the Americans should enjoy. Trumps mission is to make America a better place to live in for Americans with a sufficient employment for everyone with a good pay and a lower priced commodity.

[mindrust]

Leave big cities, buy a big house with a big garden near to the sea. You can get your fish, vegetables, fruits for free. Stop being big companies' bitch. You don't have to smoke marlboro, grow your own weed. As long as your the only one who's smoking, nobody would know it.

If you can't take the risks, then stop crying and keep sucking.