Are YOU ONE of the 41 million in U.S. can’t afford basics?
According to MarketWatch about “one in five working American families can’t afford basic needs, and many scrape to get by on insufficient income and government aid.”
“Many of these workers earn too much to qualify for “work supports” such as Medicaid and food stamps, while their employer-provided health insurance doesn’t cover enough of their basic medical costs, according to the report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Center for Social Policy at the University of Massachusetts.”
These problems did not occur overnight. This economic debacle began as far back as 1970 and has been growing and getting worse ever since. The main stimulus that has been driving all of the factors has been greed. The desire to make money has been central to the financial rape of the American worker. Almost everyone jumped on the band wagon and we, and I include myself, all of us went along.
Beginning in the 70s, the one family paycheck was not meeting the needs. So the wife had to go to work to help pay the bills. Of course she did not mind at first because being able to work meant that she was getting the equal role in society that she had always deserved. What very few of us figured out was that while the equal job and equal rights for women was good it was happening for the wrong reason. It was a way to continue the money squeeze on the family.
Simultaneous with the squeeze new labor saving goods were being invented for the home and the office. Things like automatic this and automatic that and new goods to spend money on each year. Things that each of us just had to have. New cars, two cars, new stoves, new dishwashers net everything. Many of the products were advertised to have a long life with few break downs. However, once the manufactures had saturated the market with their products then they stopped worrying about how long their products would last and started finding ways to obsolete their old products by producing the new and improved. Take TV as an example. We have gone from black & white to color to bigger screens to wide screen and now we have High Definition without a backward look.
We don’t repair things today we replace them and we are faced with doing that replacement every couple of years or less.
It isn’t that the old does not work its that to keep the economy running the consumer has to buy more and more and more with money that buys less and less.
And now we have consumed too much. Our overweight bodies show it. Our gadget filled houses bulge with stuff that we thought we just had to have and really cannot afford. For example how long did you use the old black phone before cell phones came along? We have to stop. We are being forced to stop and evaluate our lives. To change our ways, to cast off our debts, to hold on to our homes we must “hunker-down”. We must find the ways and the means to protect our very existence while we dig our way out of debt. To protect you from unsecured creditors you may want to take a look at www.asprogram.com . They have real people that will talk with you when you call.
Another thing to do is to re-evaluate all of your daily, weekly and monthly expenditures and as you write down each of those costs determine if it is something that you really need. Is the cost a necessity or not? If you do not need it to stay alive then stop the cost. This must be your first step in putting your financial house back in order.