How does anyone afford anything

In the midwest, as the New York Times reported, the odds are less than half. Each day was concluded when my exhausted mother picked me up late at the very end of after-school and took me home for a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. Yet despite the evident effort they put in, my parents, college professors, had health insurance and the promise of pensions and social security. In their younger days, there were ample employment opportunities and cheaper rents in metropolitan areas.

They could afford some extras that would strain a similar family today: out of their wages from teaching at a college, I received ice skating lessons. I was sent to a New York City private school, and we went on long vacations at the shore, where I could buy a kite in the shape of a butterfly and maybe collect wild plums on the dunes.

It meant new brown Stride Rite Mary Janes with little purple and silver flowers when the old shoes were pinching the toes. It meant homeownership — not for us, but for others like us. Nothing fancy, but a proper ranch house with a garage. For the American middle class now, these markers of middle-class life are less and less common. The middle class is endangered on all sides, and the promised rewards of belonging to it have all but evaporated. This decline has also led to a degradation of self-image.

Before the crash, only one-quarter of Americans viewed themselves as lower class or lower-middle class. Even those who were struggling tended to view their problems as temporary.

No longer. For the median family of color, that wage and wealth stagnation can be pretty dire. In a study published in by the organizations the Institute for Policy Studies and Prosperity Now full disclosure: IPS is the fiscal sponsor of my organization, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project , the median wealth — assets minus debt — of white households is now over 68 times higher than that of black households. If you are an American working parent dealing with all of these stresses, you may feel like you are betting against the house and the house is always winning.

Yet most of the parents I spoke to blamed only themselves, not a system stacked against them. The same goes for your phone. Use credible paid or free budgeting apps and devices to help you keep a manageable budget. There are plenty of free programs like the Google or Yahoo calendars and schedulers. These tools give you a format to leave notes and reference those notes to applicable dates.

They actively find ways to help you lower your bills and expenses, but take a percentage of the money they help you to save. Whatever method you use to get your bills in line, the money you save will put you a step closer to living on your own.

Set a target amount for your monthly expenses that equals the monthly amount you must have in order to live alone. It affects your rent, your utility bills and every credit purchase you have to make.

If you pay off debt, you improve your credit score and can live on your own more successfully. Begin with smaller debts. Do you currently pay for more than one streaming service? Take that monthly cost and apply it to a bill. Buy bargain food instead of name brands for a few weeks. These may seem like nickel and dime choices, but if they get rid of nickel and dime debts, so much the better.

For your major debts look into debt settlement or debt consolidation to pay off your primary creditors. These two methods are defined below. Large credit card bills may be out of hand and piling up. Look into the methods above and you may be able to make your debt more manageable. This is another important step to being ready to live on your own. Most financial consultants believe savings are the greatest indicator of financial stability.

Some financial planners, such as financier Suze Orman, believe you should have an emergency savings that allows you to live for six months without additional income. This rule breaks down as follows:. In unguarded moments, people sometimes talk how big the balance is on their home equity line of credit.

Now you know how they afforded the lux home reno and the three-week trip to Europe. Are you reading this newsletter on the web or did someone forward the e-mail version to you? If so, you can sign up for Carrick on Money here. How to maximize miles and points while holiday shopping. If you want to squeeze the maximum amount of credit card rewards from this spending, check out these tips. One suggestion is to the use the online shopping malls operated by many reward programs to earn extra rewards.

According to this blog, brunch coffee is almost always bad. So why waste the money? Instead, they'd rather put money into items that will last. Anyone who has planned a wedding knows just how costly they can be. But those who are good with money aren't planning to spend lots of money on their big day.

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