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Many Americans’ bank accounts are on life support.
Some 40 percent of consumers were living paycheck-to-paycheck out of necessity in December 2025, according to a recent survey of 2,465 people from financial data and news site PYMNTS. The sheer number of those waiting on their next paycheck to cover expenses signals a troublesome financial reality for many.
Living paycheck to paycheck – using most of a paycheck for necessities with little or no money left over for savings – became more prevalent as the year went on, PYMNTS found. Some 29 percent of consumers entered 2025 barely surviving on their paychecks, and that number jumped 16 percentage points by December.
Don’t worry everyone! Tariff rebates are a’ comin’!
Oh but lol they’re not for you. They’re for the ones that passed on the fees to you. And they’re being paid by you. Double dipping motherfuckers are keeping nearly half the population in p2p lives and it’s disgusting!!!
To the tune of $166 billion AND you won’t see prices drop. Wealth transfer by this administration is a feature not a bug.
We need a bail out. But that will never happen.
It won’t happen to us. It’ll happen to the shillionaire corpo dickbags, though!
No, you need riots.
But that will never happen.
I never imagined I would be in this boat — now I hold an oar and a spool of duct tape for any emerging holes.
Are we great yet?
I always have a hard time interpreting these types of article because they make the headline sound outlandish then don’t go into all the details of the data/survey method. I’ve heard anecdotally that sometimes these surveys will have a narrow scope, like “can’t cover a $1k expense” is only considering money in checking accounts because it would take some time to transfer money from savings or other accounts so these funds are not counted. Or they will report living paycheck to paycheck because they have no money left over after expenses but the expenses include X% contribution to retirement accounts. This article says “29 percent of consumers entered 2025 barely surviving on their paychecks” so they are currently using up all of their pay on expenses and not contributing to savings but how many of those same people have savings built up from prior years that they could draw on?
Just based on personal experience I could believe that a large number of Americans really are living paycheck to paycheck and would have trouble covering a major expense. But if this is true I would also think it should manifest in the economy as something like loan defaults, bank failures, mortgage foreclosures, huge drops in revenue for companies selling consumer goods, etc. and I haven’t seen it. Are these respondents wrong and they actually can cover a $1k emergency expense? Are they just never encountering a $1k emergency expense? Such a huge number of people living in such a precarious state and the overall economy continues to function more or less normally?
That’s apparently how Americans want it! They think they are free because the rich pay less tax, and minimum wage is unlivable, and they don’t have free healthcare and education.
I’ve been saying before that I think EU should tax American goods for social dumping, which IMO is unfair competition against countries that don’t do that.
