Reaching Out To Strangers To Pay Bills
Last week the Washington Post released a report showing how some Americans are struggling so much to pay their bills, they have created an online funding account to make ends meet.
Before I started the GoFundMe for my sister, I ordinarily wouldn’t have thought to do one unless it was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime case, like cancer or legal expenses. This is a crisis and that’s why I’m doing it.
Josh Mitchell
The Post report notes that Mitchell used these funds to purchase a car for her sister as a ‘necessity’ for her job in upstate New York.
Due to a rise in demand for sites such as GoFundMe, they created a new category in October of last year specifically designed for rent, food, and other bills. Over $100 million was raised at that time compared to the same time a year previously. This is a 150% increase.
Canadian fundraising companies FundRazr and British site GoGetFunding report a similar trend, though the numbers are not as large. Honeymoon sites such as PlumFund and HoneyFund have also seen a similar trend.
The report notes that some individual funding campaigns are doing very little to raise cash.
It very quickly dies down. You have to constantly be reaching new audiences or new people in order for it to stretch out.
Mackenzie Doyle, a 21-year-old student in Lincoln, Neb., was diagnosed with a chronic illness when the pandemonium began in 2020.
Doyle needed the money because the cost her treatments and medications went up as stores were picked clean of cold and flu medicines. She started a GoFundMe account to help pay for these conditions. She got many donations at first but it quickly died down. She is now relying stimulus checks and selling clothes online.
Read more about it here:
Flashback To The “Booming Economy” Before Covid
Near the end of December of 2020 The WinePress did a report showing where the new levels of American debt were at. According to the Motley Fool, household debt was estimated to have risen to around $145,000 and a median of approximately $67,000. That report breaks down even more numbers and amounts of debts Americans have been racking up.
The WinePress also reported in mid-January that less than 40% could fund a $1,000 emergency fund.
In 2019, before the Covid pandemonium struck the world, American’s were led to believe that the economy was the best it ever was and things were operating like a well-oiled machine. However, there are some statistics that were ignored and forgotten about that shed light on the economic state of most Americans in 2019.
According to a CNBC report posted on April 8th of this year, the average American was living in massive debt.
Citing evidence from 2019, before the pandemonium of 2020, credit bureau Experian said the average debt per consumer was $90,460. This was noticeably higher than the average annual income of $50,413.
The CNBC report, however, attempts to quench reader’s alarm at the amount of debt Americans are holding onto. The report notes that it is important to factor a household’s total net worth minus their debt. They indicate that they average U.S. household net worth is $121,700.
You can read more about it here:
Additionally, there are some other statistics that are unknown to many.
In May of 2019, many reports noted that 2 out of every 5 Americans could not afford to have a $400 savings and emergency fund.
At the beginning of that year, Forbes reported that 78% of workers were living paycheck to paycheck.
That same report noted some other statistics according to a survey:
- Nearly one in 10 workers making $100,000+ live paycheck to paycheck
- More than 1 in 4 workers do not set aside any savings each month
- Nearly 3 in 4 workers say they are in debt – and more than half think they always will be
- More than half of minimum wage workers say they have to work more than one job to make ends meet
- 28% of workers making $50,000-$99,999 usually or always live paycheck to paycheck, and 70% are in debt
- 32% of the nearly 3,500 full-time workers surveyed use a budget and only 56% save $100 or less a month.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
[7] The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. [26]Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts. [27] If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee?Proverbs 22:7, 26-27
As we have reported numerous times already, Americans are broke, they have no savings, mile-high debts, in an economy where jobs are being hemorrhaged left and right, inflation continues to skyrocket, and people forced to live on stimmies – that are not being used wisely but rather spent on nonsense and dumped into Bitcoin into the stock market.
[25] The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour. [26] He coveteth greedily all the day long: but the righteous giveth and spareth not.Provers 21:25-26
Also, that report from CNBC is very dishonest. That report I cited came out a few weeks ago, but it has already been established that Americans are much deeper in debt than that of 2019; so for them to refer to the 2019 numbers is very disingenuous. Not only that, they tried to keep the asinine cliché alive, that having debt is perfectly normal, especially in comparison to net worth. The very reason why, in a lot of instances, Americans have such high is debt because they spent money they do not have on things that supposedly boost their net worth!
Putting those detail aside, that report and the other statistics demonstrate just how “booming” our economy actually was. Donald Trump, his administration, and the rightwing media, absolutely played up the success of the economy. The economy never recovered from 2008, and since then the country has been putting band-aids on gun shot wounds. And these numbers are just some of what else was going on. I cannot list them all, but we have mentioned some before on The WinePress, such as money velocity continuingly getting murdered, bailouts to industries and various sectors, an increasing trade deficit (that had now returned to 2008 levels at the end of 2020), inflation at the grocery store, the repo market crisis, retail and brick & mortar stores forced to close (which was easily surpassed in 2020 and currently), an average of over 200K jobless claims a week under Trump, and on and on. If you question any of this, check back on our previous economic reports and do your own homework.
But I mention all of these facts, and the ones in the report, to demonstrate the economy was not doing well. There were some improvements, yes, but that damage that was done from the collapse in ’08 was the beginning of the end that most never recovered from, but were given the illusion that things had improved. I mention all of this to remind readers that the media and politicians had created a smokescreen to cover up what was really occurring, making the masses believe what they could clearly see with their own two eyes was not actually reality.
[29] A violent man enticeth his neighbour, and leadeth him into the way that is not good. [30] He shutteth his eyes to devise froward things: moving his lips he bringeth evil to pass.Proverbs 16:29-30
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