The savings problem

[alani123]

There has been extensive talk about how social security systems around the globe are having issues due to declining birth rates as well as a decline in the quality of employment for younger generations.

But another less often talked about issue is that almost nobody is able to make savings anymore.

Think about it. We all know at least some boomers. Most of them bought a car in their teens, a house in their thirties, went on frequent vacations and still even with all that were saving money beyond just for retirement savings.
Since that time, wage growth had stagnated, house prices have skyrocketed, and the purchasing power of the average salary has been going down.



So aside of the social security bubble potentially bursting in the future, there's also a bigger underlying issue.
Purchasing power has only been getting worse from generation to generation, and thus being able to make any savings is already a distant dream for most. Younger people just keep working more for less, to s point now where mostworking people can't put even a single dollar aside.

Could there be a solution for these issues? Economists have long argued about the strengths and failures of our economic system, but alas it appears as though "trickle down economics" has failed humanity.

So, do you agree that radical changes are needed?

[Poker Player]

Purchasing power has only been getting worse from generation to generation, and thus being able to make any savings is already a distant dream for most. Younger people just keep working more for less, to s point now where mostworking people can't put even a single dollar aside.

I see this as relative because part of the narrative comes from the propaganda of the (mainstream) left-wing media that sells people the victim mentality.

It is true that the purchasing power for some basic goods, such as buying a house, has been reduced for the majority of the population. But today's population generally enjoys many more goods and services than 40 years ago. Starting with the cell phone we all carry in our pockets, continuing with cheap clothes and ending with cheap travel. Forty years ago travel was a luxury that only the rich could afford and today working people have gone to the other side of the globe on a trip.

Besides that today there are more opportunities to earn money, even in the form of extra income, comfortably from home, and you have an example here in the forum with the signature campaigns.

So it is relative. For me only one part of the story is true.

[lovesmayfamilis]

I can tell about this problem by observing how most people live in my country. Loans for almost everything force people to work seven days a week. Closing one loan, another opens, and people live in debt without free money that could be invested. From here, it is noticeable that people are in a hole of debt, regularly saving every penny.
But yes, our desires do not end, and we can say that we can stop everything, but the pace of life and the developed habit of earning money practically do not allow people to stop and think that they can live differently.

[Apocollapse]

It's really a complicated situation.

You can talk this because you're not the billionaire, but if you're one of the billionaires, I'm sure you won't want to report all of your wealth and income because it would make you to pay more tax.

Since the poor and middle range people need to feed themselves, they don't mind with overwork because if they don't do it, someone else will.

[dothebeats]

People used to work one job at a time and still get enough money to buy a house in their 30s and live comfortably in their 40s. The financial system favoring huge companies and financial institutions clearly isn't working, and all that's happening is a lot of people working their asses off to businesses that give zero fucks about the welfare of their employees. I'm not even surprised why attrition rates across multiple industries is skyrocketing and everybody just wants to own a business. Your loyalty, hard work, and time invested to a company is rarely rewarded, much less noticed even by your immediate superior. There iz no reward in employment anymore, just the salary that you are expected to collect every month.

Also, consumerism have been ingrained deeply in our society through social media platforms. People who receive thwir wages end up consuming goods produced by huge companies for profit, all the while these companies neglect increasing the wages of their workers. And the government sees no problem with it (unsurprisingly). With this kind of system we are in, I don't think the next generation will even be able to fully afford a house even in their 60s unless they get lucky early on in their lives. Hard work means so little nowadays, unfortunately.

[Husires]

Social care and health insurance will be a problem for many countries that were adopting an approach that limits the number of births in an attempt to reduce the population. This data is due to the decline in the birth rate in China, and with peace and a decrease in epidemics, the average lifespan of the population will increase, making here millions of elderly people who do not produce and there. Thousands of young people are forced to work more to achieve a stable income for themselves while they grow old before they start a family, so you will find that young people begin to marry and start a family at the age of thirty or forty.

[hd49728]

People have no other ways than investment into something safe and profitable in long term.

Because if they keep their money in savings, interest rate is always smaller than inflation rate so that a longer they keep money in savings, a more loss they will get, not profit.

Governments and central banks will try to do financial regulations and eventually they announce they beat inflation, control it and life gets back to normality. However, the fact is always opposite, citizens bear the failure of governments and central banks. Producers will make smaller products while consumers will have to spend more money to buy it. It is not a winning against inflation from government and central bank.

[Die_empty]

There has been extensive talk about how social security systems around the globe are having issues due to declining birth rates as well as a decline in the quality of employment for younger generations.

But another less often talked about issue is that almost nobody is able to make savings anymore.

Think about it. We all know at least some boomers. Most of them bought a car in their teens, a house in their thirties, went on frequent vacations and still even with all that were saving money beyond just for retirement savings.
Since that time, wage growth had stagnated, house prices have skyrocketed, and the purchasing power of the average salary has been going down.

This is a big issue in my country because most people just work to survive and nobody is talking about saving for the future. Before now classroom teachers in my country could buy properties and give their children quality education but this is not the case today. Many of them are living on credit and loans. The reason for this problem is high inflation and the loss of value of our local currency. The cost of goods and services has tripled and people are practically living in abject poverty. If you can survive in this economic situation, you should be lucky.

The problem in our country is an unfavourable balance of payment caused by my country's excess imports that are not backed up by exports. The country ends up taking loans to finance budgets and some of the conditions given by this lending organisation are not good for the economy. The only way to survive in this present economic condition is to cut your expenses and search for other sources of income.     

[davis196]

Decades ago, when the purchasing power of the US dollar was decent and the inflation levels were relatively low, the people used to save money in the bank. Nowadays, putting money in the bank and waiting for interest doesn't work anymore. The people are seeking for other ways to save and invest money-real estate, investment funds, hedge funds, crypto, etc. This increases the overall risk, but it also brings higher returns.
Anyway, the money printing machine of the Federal Reserve should be blamed for all this. We just have to wait for the fiat financial system to collapse completely, before the alternative rises from the ashes. By the way, I don't believe that the alternative will be Bitcoin or crypto.

[DaNNy001]

Decades ago, when the purchasing power of the US dollar was decent and the inflation levels were relatively low, the people used to save money in the bank. Nowadays, putting money in the bank and waiting for interest doesn't work anymore. The people are seeking for other ways to save and invest money-real estate, investment funds, hedge funds, crypto, etc. This increases the overall risk, but it also brings higher returns.
Anyway, the money printing machine of the Federal Reserve should be blamed for all this. We just have to wait for the fiat financial system to collapse completely, before the alternative rises from the ashes. By the way, I don't believe that the alternative will be Bitcoin or crypto.

Wow this is interesting, you don't believe that the alternative is crypto or Bitcoin, well I think I will take it as a joke because if you are serious then I think you are still sleeping. I know the whole process of one system taking over the other is really strong so I believe it would rather be a co-existence between the two financial system and time is the only factor pending that to happen although from my view of things I actually think it's already started happening just that it's rather on a low scale.

[alani123]

Social care and health insurance will be a problem for many countries that were adopting an approach that limits the number of births in an attempt to reduce the population. This data is due to the decline in the birth rate in China, and with peace and a decrease in epidemics, the average lifespan of the population will increase, making here millions of elderly people who do not produce and there. Thousands of young people are forced to work more to achieve a stable income for themselves while they grow old before they start a family, so you will find that young people begin to marry and start a family at the age of thirty or forty.

Interestingly, the west didn't adopt any strategies specifically targeting the growth rate of the population.
Births were indirectly targeted by the fact that social policies kept being cut, while wages stagnated.

We've been getting taxed more, our wages' purchasing power keeps shrinking, basic necessities become more expensive... So in order to maintain our living standards and guarantee our children a decent future, we can't have many children. It was only natural when the government only taxes us and gives very little in return.

If only a fraction of all the corporate or military subsidies were spend back on amenities for the people, since that money comes from people's taxes anyway, more of us surely would have been more comfortable having children, or having more children anyway. But due to the fact that this doesn't seem to be changing, we've entered into a downward spiral and many western nations are not even reaching replacement rates for births, which would be at least 2 births per woman on average. So this also puts pressure on insurance schemes.

Ironically, many governments think austerity is a solution to this, which would only make things worse as even less people would want to have children therefore even accelerating the issue.

[Peanutswar]

A possible instance of improper investment is they keep working hard with their money and not having their investment they have savings every time they get a salary on their work and put it all in their savings but at the end of the day their money is just sleeping with their account with a low APY, instead of investing if this succeed they can now have a good cashflow of money even they are sleeping there's a passive income with their asset. Most of people now work hard, get paid, get liabilities, and keep paying this with the same cycle, additional to this is the lifestyle inflation every time they get an increase or money also they can now afford those things they didn't before and still cause of lacking of savings.

[AicecreaME]

New generations always use birth control to avoid unwanted pregnancy, because living nowadays is very hard and expensive, what more if you're going to have your own family without any savings and stable job at all.

Youth these days prefers life stability first before anything else. They wanted to spend their youth in travelling, eating delicious food, and other leisure activities before starting their own family. Budgeting your salary in your single source of income can hardly even support yourself in today's expenses in most jobs. So having two or more source of income is really necessary to survive in these kind of situation.

[kryptqnick]

In my country, the situation is not exactly the same as described by the op because I come from Ukraine, which used to be in the Soviet Union. So boomers could buy cars and houses, but they did get flats from the state for their work and things like that, and buying our own flat is next to impossible for the younger generations. There are more job opportunities, more ways of doing interesting challenging stuff and getting paid for it, but making savings is very hard, and earning enough to purchase your own accommodation is next to impossible. I do hope that things will get better, but so far, it's not easy.

[Hewlet]

It's difficult to save when you are earning the requirements of your daily needs. Apart from those running a self owned business, most of the salary earners don't even earn an amount that is good enough to meeting their needs talk more of making savings out of it.

Maybe before talking about saving more, we should be more concerned about the minimum wage or the ways to improving the incentives given to workers by maybe providing for thier food in the office or providing more buses for them so when thoer salary comes it won't go all out for unnecessary needs and then they can improve on thier saving habit

Everyone want to save but when you don't have much, it's your savings that will now save you.

[0t3p0t]

I can tell about this problem by observing how most people live in my country. Loans for almost everything force people to work seven days a week. Closing one loan, another opens, and people live in debt without free money that could be invested. From here, it is noticeable that people are in a hole of debt, regularly saving every penny.
But yes, our desires do not end, and we can say that we can stop everything, but the pace of life and the developed habit of earning money practically do not allow people to stop and think that they can live differently.

I find it surprising to see such thing which is also happening here in my place wherein debt is more of a hobby to most of our neighbors and even get posted on social media for not paying what they've owed. My aunt as one of the lender even died without getting paid by these people and that's sad reality about debt here in my area. Though it is not my business to know what these people are using the money they got from loans but it's like nothing just happened and maybe they sometimes take another loan to pay the existing one so yeah debt keeps on coming. I have debts as well,  and I know most of us do but the thing is we should be a good payer.

[Kelward]

You'd read books and watch videos online, attend seminars and read on this economic board about the 10 tips to become successful, mindset to become a millionaire and 100 positive attitudes to become rich, and after you've been fed with all the feel good theories to become rich, if you can't meet your basic needs and have a little extra to apply the theories then they're just where you are.

 Average income earners work two jobs yet they can't afford a decent lifestyle for their families, because the cost of living is getting high everyday, so how can they get extra money for savings? To invest requires money, to learn new skills requires money and time, therefore without money in hand, most tips to financial freedom are all a waste of time, because many have read them and remained in their average financial condition. The rich keeps getting richer while the poor keeps getting poor, and the economies don't encourage the poor to save and have better future.

[Natsuu]

It's clear that saving money has become harder for many especially with rising living costs and stagnant wages. People are working more but struggling to set aside any savings. There's a need for changes whether it's better job opportunities, affordable housing or other policies that can make things easier for everyone. It's a complex issue but acknowledging the problem is a step toward finding solutions right?

[icalical]

The only similar thing that happening in my country is the surging of housing price, other than that I think it's slightly different. The salary growth is not stagnant, the average salary has been tripled compared to 10 years ago in here. And there are definitely more and more people buying cars. I think there are a lot more middle-middle and upper-middle class than lower-middle class and an actual poor people, less people are unemployed tho it still many.

My non-expert guess is that the economic crisis hit harder on the developed nation than on the developing nation and 3rd world nation. All that being said, I do agree that a change would improve global economic in general.

[Dunamisx]

There has been extensive talk about how social security systems around the globe are having issues due to declining birth rates as well as a decline in the quality of employment for younger generations.

Has it not gotten to a point where people are advising others to reduce the numbers of births to be able to carter for the little we've given birth to, this is all about population, there are advantages and disadvantages in it, now people have reduced the birth rate and other aspects of the economy are falling down lacking behind, what should we do, work force is what we cannot do without, understand the power of man labour, efforts and their unique roles in production