7 SHOCKING Money Stats of The Average Person

Something that was sent to me recently by one of my viewers was the 2025 Bank Rate Emergency Savings Report. And after reviewing this report, I found seven shocking facts about people's finances today that I need to share with you guys, because depending on where you fit in to all of these things we're going to talk about, you can pretty much gauge how good things are going for you and how well you've been managing your own finances. Because on paper, things are supposed to be stabilizing, right? Inflation is supposed to be going down. The job market is supposedly fine and consumers are resilient because the retail spending is still happening. All these things that we keep being told. But this report from Bank Rate shows just how fragile the American consumer really is right now. And what it reveals is that the U.S. economy is slowly falling apart behind the scenes. Fact number one, 80% of Americans did not save a single extra dollar throughout all of 2025. That means 80% of Americans did not increase their savings at all for the entire year. That means after years of inflation and higher rent costs, higher insurance, higher groceries, and a bad job market, people are going into 2026 with no more financial protection than they had a year ago. And I would argue with even less when you factor in inflation. And it gets worse because about one third of Americans now have less emergency savings than they did at the start of 2025. And about 25% have no emergency savings at all. Absolutely nothing. That means 25% of people in this country are one flat tire away, one medical bill away, one paycheck away from a financial crisis, guys. I don't know how this is being called resilience. This is basically survival mode that people are in. People are just doing the best they can, in many cases, sometimes not doing the best that they can, sometimes being just completely irresponsible. But this is the state of affairs. But the second thing that this report reveals, I think is a very powerful point that I want everybody to understand. It's something I talk about a lot here, which is that your income matters more than any budgeting changes that you can make to your life. Meaning that the best way to improve your finances is to make more money because you can only cut out so many expenses. You can only budget so much. I think people should do a combination of both. But if you're able to increase your income, that's going to substantially impact your financials more than whatever few expenses you're able to cut out. Unless your expenses are just crazy and you spend money on tons of things that you could be saving thousands of dollars a month, that's another story. But what a lot of the financial gurus will tell you is that you're not budgeting hard enough if you're not able to make it today. But this report pretty much blows that narrative out of the water because the number one factor in whether someone can build emergency savings or not is not spending less, it is actually earning more. So people who increase their emergency savings were almost four times more likely to also report higher incomes. And meanwhile, people whose savings went down were far more likely to say that their income dropped. So the savings rate has a very high correlation with how much money you are just pulling in every single month. And that reveals something very important, guys. You cannot save your way out of an income problem. You can cut back on coffee. You can cancel different subscriptions and live on a spreadsheet if you want to. And I think it's important that people do have a budget. But if the wages are just not keeping up with your cost of living, there's nothing you can do to make those numbers work. And listen, I realize it's easier said than done to just go out and make more money. I'm not trying to oversimplify it. And I know it's very difficult to make more money in this economy, especially if you're relying on a traditional job. But just know that actually making more money is probably the solution to your financial woes more than cutting out your weekly trip to Starbucks or your Netflix subscription. Number three is actually kind of scary, but probably the reality for more people than we would like to admit, which is that most Americans don't feel safe financially anymore, even if they're doing okay. 60% of Americans say they are uncomfortable with their level of emergency savings. This includes people with jobs, people who are currently paying their bills on time, people who actually have savings, people that have retirement accounts. And these people are stable, providing that nothing goes wrong. But you could pretty much say that for basically anyone, guys. Everyone's stable until something goes wrong. The key difference is how long can you be stable for after something goes wrong? That's where the whole idea of emergency savings comes in. But most Americans say that they would need at least three months of expenses saved in order to feel comfortable. And a majority say that they would need six months or more in order to feel truly safe. But only 46% actually have three months saved and only 27% have six months saved. So clearly there's a lot of work to be done there. And that's something I definitely advocate for. I think you should even push that number up to a year, if possible. If you can actually have a year's worth of income saved in the bank, so all of your expenses are covered, that is huge financial security in this current economy and job market. And today I'm walking on East Broadview Drive and some of the cross streets and over to West Broadview Drive here in Bay Harbor Islands. Number four is pretty insane, which is that one in three Americans now has more credit card debt than they have savings. That means when something goes wrong for these people, they don't fall back on their savings. They fall into debt. Less and less people also have money saved up for an emergency, even just a $1,000 emergency. And more people now are saying that they would have to put that expense on a credit card and pay it off over time. And that's how financial stress starts. First, you lose your savings. Then you build up debt. Then the interest compounds. And at that point, even a small emergency can basically bankrupt you. And you better believe people are doing this, guys. That's why you see bankruptcy filings on the rise. It's why you see car delinquencies on the rise. It's why mortgage delinquencies are on the rise. Why student loan and credit card delinquencies are on the rise. Basically, all forms of major debt delinquencies are on the rise right now. And going back to that bigger emergency fund, number five is that Americans are draining what little savings they have just to be able to survive. About one third of Americans right now use their emergency savings in the past year. And almost all of it was used up for medical bills, car repairs, rent and utilities, groceries, helping a family member or friend, or paying down debt. Now, the only one I agree with here on this list is paying down debt. I think that's a good way to use this up for. But the regular living expenses, guys, groceries, rent and utilities, you definitely shouldn't be tapping emergency savings for that. If you have to tap emergency savings for those things, that means you are living beyond your means. It makes sense to tap it for medical bills or a major car repair or paying down debt because that's why you build an emergency fund to begin with. But to cover an everyday expense, rent and utilities, that's not good. And the most common amount that was pulled out of savings was anywhere between $1,000 and $2,500. And this just shows us that emergency funds, whatever little bit people have left, is now being used just to cover the basics. It's not being used what it's intended for, which is an actual emergency. Now, the sixth thing that this report reveals is that the economy is slowly draining people's ability to prepare for the future. About 75% of people are reporting that the economy itself has made it harder to save because of inflation, because of interest rates, because of the job market. Even though inflation is not rising as fast as it was a few years ago, prices never came down. They're still going up. So the final and seventh thing that this report reveals is that most people are just getting by right now. Yes, you are going to have the elite. You are going to have the top 10 or 20% of Americans that are doing well and supporting the economy, spending 60% or 70% of the money. We know that. But the fact that this many people are having a hard time getting by is a huge warning sign for 2026, guys. They keep still telling us that we're not in a recession and we don't have to worry about one coming, yet everyday finances are already telling the picture that we are in a recession and have been in one for a long time. The good news about that is that every time we have hit a major recession in the past, after everything crashes and burns and the ashes and the dust have cleared, then people are usually able to pull out of it and come out stronger on the other side. But unfortunately, people have to have a downfall in between there and experience a lot of hardship. And that's kind of where we're at right now. And unfortunately, this report is revealing that things are probably not going to get any better in 2026, because if people have already exhausted their savings and are relying more on debt in order to survive, well, how is that trend going to heal itself in 2026, guys? After everything we just reviewed here, the only thing that can really help people is increasing their income substantially. That's what most people need. And unless you're able to do that, there's a good chance you're going to be stuck in this cycle. And it certainly is a fine line to walk because on the one hand, you know, life isn't all about money. And there's definitely things that are far more important in life than making money or your annual income. But at the same time, if your financial life is in ruins and you're hurting, then it's going to hurt all other aspects of your life as well. So finding that balance for everybody is really key. And part of the problem that's holding so many back is the fact that more workers are stuck in part-time jobs than ever before. A lot of people are working multiple part-time jobs because that's all that's available to them. And a lot of these people wish they had a full-time job. People with multiple jobs is now 5.7% of the American workforce, which is the highest level that we've seen in 25 years, which is about 9.3 million people. And that goes to show you that people are trying, people are trying hard to make that extra money. But unfortunately, many of these jobs just really don't pay enough for people to really get ahead. It ends up being just enough to cover the necessities, sometimes not even that. In fact, a number of Americans with two full-time jobs actually jumped by 18% in just the past year. So I definitely respect people who are doing this right now. And a lot of them who are doing it are actually women. I understand that it's out of necessity, but I just hope that for everybody's sake who is doing this, is working two full-time jobs, that it is something that's going to be temporary and not something you're going to have to do forever. And it's like, on the one hand, is it good that people have access to multiple jobs if they need it? Yeah, that is a good thing. It's better than people needing those jobs and not having them available at all. But just from the human perspective, the fact that people need to work this much just to be able to get by is a worrying trend. And it's hard to see as a positive thing. Here's actually an example of a guy who had a government contract in Maryland. And after the government shutdown, he lost all of his work. So what he started doing is delivering for UberEats during the shutdown. Since he wasn't making his regular paycheck, he quickly fell behind on credit card payments and he depleted all of his savings. And he was making about $400 a week from doing UberEats, which was just barely enough to cover the basics. But now that he has his full-time job back after the shutdown is over, he's still working part-time with UberEats to make that extra money because this was sort of a wake-up call like, yeah, obviously I wasn't ready for this. If I had to deplete all my savings within just a month and a half, because that's how the government shutdown lasted, clearly you weren't ready. And that leads me to the latest jobs report that we just got on Friday. And it says that the U.S. economy added 50,000 jobs in December. They say that the Friday jobs report shows us that we have had the worst annual job growth outside of a recession since 2003. Outside of a recession being the key word. So does that mean we're in a recession? Well, yeah, I would say that we probably are. But curiously, the unemployment rate actually declined from the 4.6% down to 4.4%, which is interesting because you see so many people still losing jobs. But when you look at this story of the government worker I just talked about, or government contract worker, didn't work directly for the government, but when the shutdown happened, his government contract ended. Okay. That story shows you, what did this guy do? Did he go out and file for unemployment? No. He started driving for Uber Eats. He does not count as unemployed. And I have been talking about this for a while now. That's been one of my suspicions about why unemployment remains suspiciously low. And it is because of the gig economy. It's because there are ways to go out there and earn fast cash after losing a job that didn't exist 15 and 20 years ago during 2008. And also the way that they finagle the unemployment figures these days makes it so that it doesn't look nearly as bad as it really is. They also already revised down the November data. Big surprise. The initial jobs numbers that came out in November was 64,000. They just revised it down to 56,000. And get this, October's revision was abysmal, guys. The October revision showed a loss of 173,000 jobs. Okay. And initially it was reported that only 105,000 were lost when in fact we lost 173,000. That is insane. Every time we've talked about the job market, I warned people that we were going to see these revisions and the revisions that are coming in are actually far worse than we actually thought they would be. So throughout the only average about 49,000 jobs a month. Okay. And all of the revisions are not actually in yet. So it could be actually lower than that. We could see another situation like we saw in 2024, when after all the revisions, there were basically no jobs created. And if this is the slowest job growth that we see outside of a recession, but what does that tell you? This is a recession. The chief economist over at the Navy Federal Credit Union also says that 2025 already shows net job losses without the healthcare and social assistance sectors, which added 405,000 and 308,000 jobs respectively. So when you just minus those jobs, you already are negative. And here's the worst part about this. Okay. The share of people who have been without a job for 27 weeks or longer as a percentage of the unemployed population hit 26% in December. That means you've been looking for a job for more than six months, guys, you've been out of work for the better half of a year. Going back to what I was saying earlier, that shows you why it's so important to have that emergency fund. Obviously talking about this in retrospect, isn't going to do anyone any good. If you already lost the job and you're already broke, there's not much you can do besides hopefully learn a lesson for the future and try to do better next time. But the Fed has been lowering interest rates, which is supposedly supposed to help the job market and help jobs be created. But we're looking at one of the worst job markets in recent history, and those Fed rate cuts are doing absolutely nothing to help create more jobs, especially in the age of AI. So it just makes you wonder right now what, if anything, can actually breathe life back into the job market. I don't see anything. One other thing I want to cover in this video is Trump also just announced that he wants to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for one year. And it's seeing some strong initial support from lawmakers, but obviously a ton of pushback from credit card issuers. And right now credit card interest rates average in the mid 20% range. So a cap of 10% on credit debt would significantly cut borrowing costs down. And right now we don't know if he's going to try to do some kind of executive order to make this happen, or if he's going to put pressure on the credit card companies to do it voluntarily. We don't know yet, but it also makes me wonder how much this is really going to help, especially people that are relying on debt right now to get by, right? Because say, for example, if you are paying $500 a month right now in credit card payments, and you've already stretched to the max, and they put a cap on your interest payments for credit cards down to 10%. And let's say that cuts your monthly credit card payment, if you're paying the minimum or whatever, down to $300 a month. Well, that gives you that extra $200 a month buffer. And unfortunately, that's how people think, right? They think, well, I was paying 500 before, I'm only paying 300. So now I can afford to charge more, whether it's for necessities or for discretionary purchases, it doesn't really matter. The point is, I just wonder how much this would actually fix anything. I feel like for people who are irresponsible in general with their finances, it's just going to make the problem worse, you know? Because it allows people to get further into debt because it's temporarily lowering their payments. And then once they match their payments from what it was before, and then the interest rates go back up after a year, then you're basically filing for bankruptcy. So people are just in so much trouble right now. And I just hope that anybody out there who's not in trouble is grateful every day for the smart and responsible decisions that they have made. And after watching this and hearing some of these things, if you realize that you are somebody who is in trouble, that this will be some inspiration and you maybe learn a thing or two in order to try to help you get out of that trouble, because it is possible. So if you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to the channel. 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