Meet the typical American family. It has about $3,800 in the bank. No one has a retirement account, and the neighbors who do only have about $35,000 in theirs. Mutual funds? Stocks? Bonds? Nope. The house is worth $160,000, but the family owes $95,000 on it to the bank. The breadwinners make more than $43,000 a year but can’t manage to pay off a $2,200 credit card balance.
That is the portrait of the median American household as painted by the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
Now, if only I could convince my wife that the typical American family looks more like this, and less like the second home owning, horse riding, vaction rich, SUV driving, family of skiiers who tend to live in my neighborhood, the family contentment level would rise a little.
No comments:
Post a Comment