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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
A growing share of lower-income Americans are struggling to get by financially as their wages fail to keep up with inflation, according to a recent analysis.
Roughly 29% of lower-income households are living paycheck to paycheck, up slightly from 2024 and from 27.1% in 2023, data from the Bank of America Institute shows. The financial firm defines that as spending more than 95% of household income on necessities such as housing, gasoline, groceries, utility bills and internet service.
In 2025, nearly a quarter of all U.S. households lived paycheck to paycheck, Bank of America estimates.
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Blogpost incoming: This is a big reason why me and my partner dramatically downsized our apartment and went from spending ~40% of my monthly income on rent in a downtown townhouse to literally the cheapest place we could find, which is a 2br with about a third of the square footage and is unofficially dorms for the college four minutes down the road. Most people ask what we’re studying when we give them our address even though we both graduated years ago. Rent is now less than 10% of my income. It took months of literally spamming the leasing office to get this place and in the end the only thing that worked was finding out one of my partner’s friends had another friend who lived here and was moving back home so we were able to take over the lease at the 11th month and renew it in our name.
Not saying this as advice to anyone, I understand we were pretty fortunate. I’m just saying this to tell you that living paycheck to paycheck fucking sucks. It sucks big ass fucking balls and at this point we’re just squirreling away as much money as we can and waiting for better days. We’re not giving any more money to any parasitic landlords than we have to.
Seems pretty low. This source from September said:
PNC Bank’s annual Financial Wellness in the Workplace Report shows that 67 percent of workers now say they are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 63 percent in 2024.
The report surveyed 1,000 U.S. workers aged 21 to 69 who work full time at companies with more than 100 workers. The margin of error is pls or minus 3 percent.
Then again, it’s newsweek, so I don’t know. Either number is way too high for “the richest nation on the history of the world!!”
And this is going keep getting worse.
Cutting out Uber Eats, restaurants, and bars goes a long way to paying down debt (groceries are so much cheaper). Even the people in giant holes on Caleb Hammer’s show walk away with a budget to kill their debt.
Credit card debt is fucking murder. The interest is worse than many realize. Murder it so it doesn’t murder you.
Good thing you didn’t read the post, which defined living paycheck to paycheck as spending 95% of your income on necessities like housing and food. You think these people are blowing money at the bars? Lol. If anything they’re getting a bottle of bottom shelf shit and drinking alone in the dark.
Ohhhh, just stop buying iPhones and avocado toast, why didn’t I think of that? It seems so simple in hindsight!
Depending on how often you buy iPhones, sure. But I think we all know it’s rent, health insurance, and rising food costs that kills most Americans.
No shit? Almost like I was using a common allegory for being out of touch with actual poor people to critique that commentary “advice”.
Agreed, that is very much a ‘it depends’. A $1000 pro max every year is opulent, a used SE every 5 years isn’t.
I think you may have a misconception of what the bottom 25% of earners do. Or, maybe I do. I don’t know anyone that does that stuff regularly, not even the high earners I know.
Same. The majority of people I know cook at home, don’t even have a credit card let alone use one, have pretty old cars, homes and rentals that should be inexpensive, keep their same phone until it’s unusable. Pretty much every splurge they have is thanks to some amazing deal or find. And each year it gets harder and harder to save anything.
I also know a few people who regularly use food delivery services, live on pop and snack foods, refuse to learn to drive and get a cheap car making them reliant on either me(this is going to stop; I be damned tired) or Uber/Lyft(and they go to and leave from work at a very high traffic time making their rides more expensive), and they can’t seem to figure out why they don’t have any money.
I can see both sides of this coin, but if it is a two-sided coin, the first side I described is much bigger than the second.
I agree. Even “lazy” home cooking (frozen meals, Ramen, frozen pizza) is always cheaper than restaraunts.
One of the best things I ever did for myself, IMO, was making a budgeting spreadsheet. Except for a basic =SUM() tile showing how much I’ve earned minus what I’ve spent, it’s all manual, nothing is automatically filled in and I have to really reflec and be honest to myself about every purchase I make. Everything gets logged. I don’t know how much I was spending/earning before the spreadsheet (obviously) but I just know that I’m budgeting smarter with one.
Or society dangles every kind of temptation in front of people then wags its finger at them when they partake. Your finance bro mentality is neither helpful or wanted.
Don’t carry credit card debt, the interest eviscerates your finances. It is a fact much of America does not take to heart.
When you’ve got rent to pay and mouths to feed, and paychecks dont arrive for another week (or more), sometimes it’s a necessity. And when emergencies arrive (as happens more and more often) people at this financial level generally dont have the “rainy day” fund to lean on.
This is not exclusively a personal issue, it is mainly a systemic one. Sure, many people could do with some better financial literacy and personal responsibility… but that’s nowhere near the epidemic of parasitic opportunists eager to squeeze dry every person they can. The desperate being the easiest to exploit, in most cases.
paychecks dont arrive for another week (or more), sometimes it’s a necessity
Absolutely. And then when the bill comes in six weeks, pay the balance.
Credit card use is fine, carrying a balance on credit cards is what eviscerates your finances.
And more bills come in to pay in that six weeks. And mouths still need feed and heads still need roofing.
“Just pay the balance” is great advice… if you actually have the money to do so. Most people in these situations don’t. Which is why they’re in that position in the first place. Suggesting otherwise is exceedingly out of touch with reality.
